Founder & Executive Director: Maria Foscarinis

Program Staff
Policy Director: Jeremy Rosen
Housing Attorney: Tristia Bauman
Domestic Violence and Education Attorney: Lisa Coleman
Civil Rights Program Director: Heather Maria Johnson
Director of Human Rights and Children's Rights Programs: Eric Tars
Volunteer: Marion Manheimer 

Administration Staff
Director of Operations: Louise Weissman
Administrative Assistant: Robert Bennett
Development & Communications Associate: Mary Beth Morrissey

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Maria Foscarinis

Executive Director

Maria Foscarinis is founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. Maria has advocated for solutions to homelessness at the national level since 1985. She was a primary architect of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, the first major federal legislation addressing homelessness, and she has litigated to secure the legal rights of homeless persons. Maria writes and speaks widely on legal and policy issues affecting homeless persons and is frequently quoted in the media.
 
Maria is a 1977 graduate of Barnard College and a 1981 graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was an editor of the Law Review. She also holds a M.A. in philosophy. After clerking for the Hon. Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, she was a litigation associate at Sullivan & Cromwell where she volunteered to take a pro bono case representing homeless families. In 1985, she left the firm to establish and direct a Washington office for the National Coalition for the Homeless before she founded the Law Center in 1989. 
 
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PROGRAM STAFF 
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Jeremy Rosen
 
Policy Director 
 
Jeremy Rosen is the policy director for the Law Center. Jeremy previously served as executive director of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness, as director for homelessness and mental health in the National Office of Volunteers of America, and as a staff attorney at Legal Services of Greater Miami. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and his J.D. from George Washington University Law School in 1998.
 
Jeremy is an expert on federal, state, and local affordable housing policy, with a focus on homelessness, veterans housing, and housing for children, youth, and families. Jeremy's work also focuses on access to government benefits for low-income people, prisoner reentry, and the intersection of affordable housing policy and the education and child welfare systems. He is a frequent speaker on these topics, and has published numerous journal articles and papers.
 
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Tristia Bauman
 
Housing Attorney

Tristia Bauman is the Housing Attorney at the Law Center where she combines litigation, legal education, and legislative advocacy strategies to prevent and end homelessness. Her work focuses on monitoring and litigating compliance with federal statutes such as Title V of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act. Tristia also conducts legal trainings around the country, writes reports and other publications related to housing, and serves as a legal resource for homeless advocates.

Tristia began her law career at Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc. as a housing attorney working with low-income tenants in federally subsidized housing. She later served for several years as an Assistant Public Defender in Miami-Dade County where she advocated in the courts on behalf of indigent criminal defendants, including hundreds of homeless clients. Her professional experience, combined with her ample volunteer work with homeless youth in Anchorage, Alaska, Seattle, Washington, and Miami, Florida, has made Tristia into an expert on poverty law issues.

Tristia hails from Auckland, New Zealand but was raised in Washington State where she attended the University of Washington as an undergraduate and law student. She received her B.A. in Anthropology in 2000 and her J.D. in 2006.

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Lisa Coleman

Domestic Violence and Education Attorney

Lisa M. Coleman serves as the domestic violence and education attorney at the Law Center.   Lisa coordinates domestic violence programming at the Law Center, including the development of outreach materials, trainings and presentations to ensure the effective implementation of, and compliance with national, state and local laws providing housing rights for survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence.  Lisa also works closely with the Director of Children's Rights Programs to shape and implement programming to protect and enhance the education rights of homeless and unaccompanied children and youth.  In both capacities, Lisa provides technical assistance to legal services providers, advocates, government officials and individuals across the country, and engages in impact litigation related to housing for survivors of domestic violence and the education of homeless youth.

Prior to joining the Law Center, Lisa served as a law fellow in the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She received her J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law, where she was a Note & Comment Editor of the American University Journal on Gender, Social Policy & Law. Lisa received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia and taught high school U.S. History and Civics & Economics in Charlotte, North Carolina.
 
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Heather Maria Johnson
 
Civil Rights Program Director 

Heather Maria Johnson coordinates the Civil Rights Project at the Law Center. She works with advocates to challenge city practices that criminalize homelessness. Heather serves as co-counsel in litigation, files amicus briefs, and serves as a resource for attorneys pursuing litigation. She also writes reports, articles, and other publications to provide legal guidance and information about the civil rights issues of homeless people. 

In addition, Heather monitors civil rights issues throughout the country and provides technical assistance to advocates who are combating criminalization measures or working on voting issues. As part of the Civil Rights Program's public education initiative, she provides trainings related to strategies for challenging the criminalization of homelessness and promoting the voting rights of homeless persons. 

Heather received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from Duke University School of Law, where she was a member of the Duke Law Journal. She also holds a M.A. in cultural anthropology. After clerking for the Hon. James P. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, she was an associate at Latham & Watkins where she served as pro bono counsel in one of the Law Center's litigation matters challenging ordinances that criminalize homelessness. 
  
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Eric Tars
 
Director of Human Rights and Children's Rights Programs

Eric Tars currently serves as the Law Center's human rights and children's rights program director. In his human rights capacity, he works with homelessness and housing advocacy organizations to train and strategically utilize human rights as a component of their work. In his youth rights capacity, he works to protect homeless students' rights to education and advocates for homeless youth and families through trainings, litigation, and policy advocacy at the national and local levels. 
 
Before coming to the Law Center, Eric was a Fellow with Global Rights' U.S. Racial Discrimination Program and consulted with Columbia University Law School's Human Rights Institute and the US Human Rights Network. Eric's work has spanned the country and the globe. He coordinated the involvement of hundreds of organizations in the hearings of the U.S. before the UN Committee Against Torture and Human Rights in 2006. Eric has conducted numerous trainings on integrating human rights strategies into domestic advocacy, and he currently serves as the chair of the US Human Rights Network's training committee and on the Steering Committee of the Human Rights at Home Campaign. 

Eric received his J.D. as a Global Law Scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center, and during that time served as a research assistant to Prof. Mari Matsuda, as a legal assistant at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and as law clerk at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, a law firm specializing in non-profit law. He received his B.A. in political science from Haverford College and studied international human rights in Vienna at the Institute for European Studies and at the University of Vienna. 

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Marion Manheimer
 
Volunteer

Marion Manheimer, a retired social worker, has volunteered at the Law Center for over ten years. She supports legal staff in executing the Law Centers housing, children and youth, and domestic violence programs. Marion developed an interest in serving the homeless community during her career as a social worker for the Workers Compensation division of the New York State Department of Labor, where some of her clients were homeless individuals.

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ADMINISTRATION STAFF
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Louise Weissman

Director of Operations

As Director of Operations at the Law Center, Louise oversees finance, human resources, and administration.  She has over 30 years experience in operations and event planning for membership-based, policy and advocacy organizations. Over a 23-year period, Louise consulted with a host of organizations, including AARP Foundation, the Optical Society of America, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), and USAction. Prior to joining the Law Center, Louise served as SEIU International President, Andy Sterns scheduler and as Administrative Director of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival.

Louise sits on the Board of Directors at Common Good City Farm, an urban farm and education center in Washington, DC.  She holds a B.A. in Education from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Robert Bennett

Administrative Assistant

Robert Bennett serves as the administrative assistant at the Law Center, providing donor database management, processing of gifts, preparation of meeting minutes for Board committees, and other operational duties and support to the executive director, director of operations and director of development and communication. 

Before coming to the Law Center, Robert spent five years at Georgetown Universitys Office of Advancement as assistant to the senior advisor to the universitys president, senior director of medical center advancement, and senior director of the school of medicine. There, he provided donor database management, prospect research, donor follow-up, gift processing, and stewardship coordination, with various volunteers and alumni. He also spent two years at Unity Health Care, Inc., an organization originally founded as the Health Care for the Homeless Project, in Washington, DC.

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Mary Beth Morrissey

Development and Communications Associate

Mary Beth Morrissey is a former intern at the Law Center who now serves as development and communications associate. A social media enthusiast, Mary Beth received a B.A. cum laude in sociology from Barnard College in 2011.