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WATCH/Brandeis Housing Advocacy Clinic

The WATCH Housing Advocacy Clinic is a free, drop-in service for low-income residents in the Waltham area. The clinic is staffed entirely by trained Brandeis students from Laura Goldin's community-engaged learning classes and the MLK Scholars and Friends club.

The Advocacy Clinic helps clients with fair and safe housing issues, particularly in addressing lead, asbestos and other environmental exposure risks present in low-income housing, and preventing evictions and homelessness. It also often provides the first critical point of contact for many in the low-income, often immigrant community for referral to other needed services such as food and fuel assistance, medical care, domestic abuse prevention and job training. In addition, the clinic can help clients become involved with WATCH's advocacy and organizing efforts for affordable housing, and connect them to weatherization and healthy homes assistance. The clinic can also provide clients with free vouchers for the Waltham Fields Outreach Market.

Sustainability and Operation

The Advocacy Clinic began in January 2007 in Goldin's Environmental Law and Policy class (LGLS 132b) as a unique partnership with WATCH in collaboration with the Boston College Law School Legal Assistance Bureau. The goal was to meet a real community need by leveraging the learning and energy of talented Brandeis students. In late 2006, WATCH had lost its sole part-time tenant advocate and was without funds to hire another; the clinic was designed as a pre-law advocacy service to fill that gap and expand the ability to assist the community. The clinic has operated continuously since that time and more than 250 students have assisted well over that number of individuals and families in the Waltham area.

Each semester and summer, two or three experienced student leaders work with Goldin to supervise, organize, train and direct the clinic's day-to-day operation. These leaders are key to the Advocacy Clinic's successful and sustaining operation. Some have initiated significant improvements and additions, including creating the Emergency Housing Fund (EHF) to provide small amounts of financial aid to clients. In spring 2010, two clinic interns were successful in replenishing the EHF with $3,000 by organizing a Brandeis 10K road race for the cause. Other students have researched and targeted issues of concern brought to light by the clinic, such as patterns of discrimination in rentals and identification of particular multi-family buildings with lead contamination. The Boston College Legal Assistance Bureau also has been an essential partner as the clinic refers cases requiring legal assistance beyond its purview.

Value to Community and Students

The Advocacy Clinic has become a bustling place in serving community needs in its 4 ½ years of operation. The densely-populated South Side of Waltham, bordered both by Brandeis and WATCH, is home to more than half the city's population and the majority of the city's low-income immigrant families. According to the 2000 Census, 27 percent of those families earn less than $25,000 per year (most who come to the clinic earn far less) and nearly 23 percent of South Side adults do not have high school diplomas. Twenty-five percent of South Side households with children are headed by single women, who historically face the highest levels of poverty.

The free clinic offers to that population and others a welcoming environment with caring student staff eager to educate and assist. To the students, it offers an opportunity to become deeply engaged in the array of environmental and social justice issues faced by the richly diverse community surrounding the campus, and learn skills in housing law and legal research, interviewing and counseling, advocacy and more.