Maria Foscarinis left a high-powered Wall Street law firm to become a legal advocate for and with homeless people, eventually moving to Washington D.C. to open an office of the National Coalition for the Homeless in 1985--and to mount a campaign for a federal response to the crisis which was just beginning to explode across the country. She worked with a small cadre of "strange bedfellows," who ranged from controversial homeless advocate Mitch Snyder to influential Republican Senator Pete Domenici, and in 1987 the first and still only major federal legislation addressing homelessness--now known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act--became law. That landmark victory, however, was only the beginning of many struggles during Maria's almost 32 years at the helm of the National Homeless Law Center, an organization she founded in 1985 (previously known as the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty). Over the decades, the Law Center won legal victories, including upholding education rights for homeless children, converting vacant properties to housing, and combatting the criminalization of homelessness, while also laying the groundwork for the recognition of housing as a human right. Plaudits for her legal advocacy include being named a Human Rights Hero by the American Bar Association, receiving the 2016 Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize from Santa Clara University School of Law, the John Macy Award from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the 2006 Public Interest Law Award from the Public Interest Foundation at Columbia Law School, and a 2021 Rockefeller Foundation Practitioner Residency in Bellagio, Italy. Because of her internationally recognized leadership and expertise, Maria has often been called upon for both Congressional testimony and media commentary; she has been regularly quoted in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, CCTV, and Al-Jazeera, among many others. She has also contributed opinion pieces to influential publications including USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and The Hill. She has published dozens of book chapters and scholarly articles and, since 2018, has taught a seminar on Homelessness Law and Policy at Columbia Law School.
