Pro Bono Week Profiles 2019: Jane Garrido – Making Housing Vouchers Work
Voucher discrimination is rampant in DC. Every day, new apartment ads are posted online that say no vouchers, and every day people are illegally rejected from housing because a landlord does not want to accept vouchers. This problem is so widespread and so harmful that it demanded the attention of Neighborhood Legal Services Program. Once we started working on it, we quickly realized the significant impact pro bono attorneys could have. In 2017, NLSP piloted the idea of collaborating with government pro bono volunteers to file Office of Human Rights (OHR) complaints against landlords who turned people away from housing because they had vouchers. Jane Garrido was one of the first pro bono attorneys to file an OHR complaint on behalf of someone experiencing voucher discrimination. She and one of her colleagues at the Department of Labor helped a man who was experiencing homelessness to navigate the OHR process and to demand justice from the landlord who had rejected him illegally. After that first experience, Jane came back for more. And kept coming back!