Homelessness Law Blog

“I’ll be around. Somehow. I used to fall asleep thinking I wouldn’t wake up. Now I know better. Now I know, honey – it goes on and on and on.”

Last February, I wrote about a woman named “V.” She’s a homeless person who sat outside our K Street office for the better part of a year. I visited with her daily, and bought her lunch from time to time. She talked about the pain she was in, her addiction to alcohol, and the vicious love of her dead father. In between, she’d point out young women on the street and insist they were looking at me.

My visits weren’t noble. I can shamefully recall a few days when I took a different path to work because I didn’t have money for her. In shielding myself from her disappointment, I denied her the human contact she so dearly coveted.

I wrote before about a man she met at church. He was kind and gentle, giving her a place to stay while she got back on her feet. Her voice swelled with pride as she described looking for a job and scented shampoo. She was sober; there was such clarity to her thoughts.

But as the weeks passed, that clarity faded. The spark of life vanished from her eyes. There were bruises on her. She wouldn’t say where they came from, but I already knew. I pressed her for information about the man she was staying with.

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As I graduated from law school back in 2004, my women’s rights classes were abuzz with the preparations for the upcoming Supreme Court hearing of the Castle Rock v. Gonzales case. Little did I suspect that the case, which had been in the courts for five years already, would take another six years for some body of law to actually recognize the injustice that had been done to Jessica Lenahan (then Gonzales) and her family.

The case had its origins in Castle Rock, Colorado, in 1999, when Jessica Lenahan’s ex-husband abducted the couple’s three daughters, Leslie, Katheryn, and Rebecca. Despite a domestic violence restraining order limiting her husband’s access to her and her daughters, when Lenahan called the police repeatedly over several hours and went down to the police station, the police made no effort to locate the children or enforce Colorado’s mandatory arrest law. Shortly after midnight, Lenahan’s ex-husband got into a shoot out with the police, and after he was shot and killed, they found the three girls had been shot dead in the bed of his pickup truck. To this day, Lenahan has not been told definitively if it was her ex-husband or the police officer’s shots that killed them.

Lenahan sued the Castle Rock Police Department for failing to protect her daughters, particularly since she had a restraining order against her ex-husband that mandated the police to arrest him if he violated the order.  However, in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Lenahan did not have a constitutional right to protection, and that the police’s failure to enforce her protection order was not unconstitutional. (more…)

Before joining the Law Center, I provided legal assistance and representation to low-income individuals fleeing domestic violence.  I helped them obtain protective orders against their abusers, win financial support for their mutual children, and fight for child custody when necessary.

Finding housing – even temporary housing – was the first concern of most of my clients.  It was typically the biggest hurdle too.  Most clients just didn’t have the financial resources.  This reality was compounded by the fact that most domestic violence and homeless shelters are perpetually full – and there’s a dearth of shelters that are able to accommodate children too.

These experiences lingered in my mind this month when Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, carried out her two-week fact-finding mission to the United States.  (more…)

Today, Senator Dick Durbin, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, held the first hearing in eight years on the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, or the Women’s Rights Treaty), and the first ever in the Judiciary Committee, as opposed to the Foreign Relations Committee.  Equally importantly, governmental testimony was offered not just by the State Department, but also by the Justice Department, discussing the importance of ensuring women’s rights not only abroad, but here at home.  These are important steps in emphasizing that ensuring human rights is about leading by example at home as much as taking strong positions abroad.

Much of the hearing was devoted to the importance of the latter – and indeed, the impact of ratification of the treaty on our ability to lead abroad on human rights should not be underestimated.  Unfortunately, the testimony from both Senator Durbin and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Samuel Bagenstos gave too much away on the domestic impact of the treaty.  Senator Durbin said, “we don’t need CEDAW to protect women here,” and AAG Bagenstos emphasized that the package of Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations submitted with the treaty for ratification would ensure no American law would have to be modified, and the recommendations of the CEDAW Committee would not bind us.

We do need CEDAW to help protect women in the U.S.  (more…)

Over the past few weeks, the close of the 2009 Supreme Court term and the confirmation hearings for nominee Elena Kagan have together prompted much analysis of the ideology and direction of the Roberts court, particularly with respect to the impact of its decisions on “ordinary Americans.” While the role of the Court in interpreting and validating the nation’s laws has always affected the individuals bound by them, a recent body of decisions has highlighted with unusual clarity the competing interests of the mighty and the powerless where such determinations are concerned.

The Kagan hearings furnished legislators with an occasion not only to review the Court’s jurisprudence from the past few terms but also to discern common themes and priorities likely to reemerge in the years to come.  One such leitmotif has been power dynamics in the workplace and other institutional settings.  To underscore the Court’s anti-worker orientation, policymakers have pointed to such rulings as Rent-A-Center v. Jackson, which recently upheld the power of arbitration agreements to preclude judicial review of their validity, effectively obligating employees to waive their right to a trial in the event of future disputes. (more…)

In my work on housing rights for domestic violence survivors, I’m regularly aware of the impossibility of addressing the issue of homelessness in a vacuum.  While those of us engaged in legal and policy work at the Law Center tend to focus on specific subject areas, the boundaries of our fields of expertise, as is generally the case in poverty law, are increasingly porous.  For low-income women who have experienced domestic violence, homelessness is often the end of a long road paved with barriers to stability and self-sufficiency.  Only when these obstacles disappear will a path to safe and secure housing emerge for them.

One particularly shameful impediment to economic security for DV survivors has recently come to light during the national debate on health care reform.  As it turns out, DC has the dubious distinction of remaining among the handful of states that permit insurance companies to regard a history of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition for purposes of denying coverage .  As outrageous as this fact might seem in isolation, it is particularly disturbing when viewed in tandem with such additional barriers to stability as housing and employment discrimination.

Women who disclose their status as survivors already face a range of repercussions: loss of income, hostility from landlords wary of noise and property damage, and inaccessibility of safe and affordable housing.  Until federal health care reform is fully implemented in 2014, they may have one more reason to fear the consequences of seeking the help they need.  Fortunately, members of the DC Council have recently sought to remedy this injustice by proposing legislation to ban local insurers from denying coverage due to domestic violence history.  The Law Center enthusiastically supports this step towards greater economic security for survivors.

-Rachel Natelson, Domestic Violence Attorney