Saint Louis University Public Law Review Volume 19 Number 2 Representing the Poor and Homeless: Innovations in Advocacy (Volume Article 8 XIX, No. 2) 2000 Homelessness and Human Rights: Towards an Integrated Strategy Maria Foscarinis National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/plr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Foscarinis, Maria (2000) "Homelessness and Human Rights: Towards an Integrated Strategy," Saint Louis University Public Law Review: Vol. 19 : No. 2 , Article 8. Available at: https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/plr/vol19/iss2/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Saint Louis University Public Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarship Commons. For more information, please contact Susie Lee. SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW HOMELESSNESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED STRATEGY MARIA FOSCARINIS* Years ago, a volunteer team of lawyers staffed a legal clinic at a shelter in Washington, D.C. Any resident who felt a need for legal counsel could come to the folding table we had set up in the shelter hall way. Quite a few did, bringing a wide range of problems: evictions, benefit denials, unpaid wages. While their circumstances were unusually desperate, these clients presented routine legal problems. Others had more complicated stories involving the CIA, radio waves and thought control. These problems we did not generally think of as legal: we referred these clients to the social workers thinking, almost certainly mistakenly, that there was a mental health treatment program for them.