Soros Justice Fellowships

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights

With federal spending for public housing and mental health treatment consistently in decline, homelessness is on the rise. Cities across the country are responding by housing homeless people through the criminal justice system, sending people to jail for “offenses”—such as sleeping, eating, or sitting in public—that essentially punish them for their homeless status. Cities across the country look to San Francisco for ideas on homeless policy, but the city still puts millions of dollars into criminalizing homelessness. Through her work at the Lawyers’ Committee, Elisa Della-Piana aims to influence homeless policy nationally by reorienting San Francisco’s approach to homelessness, underscore why spending scarce resources on criminalization is illogical and counter-productive, and protect homeless people from the civil rights abuses attendant to enforcement of status crimes laws.

Della-Piana is an attorney working against the criminalization of homelessness at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco. In 2004, she was awarded an Equal Justice Works Fellowship, sponsored by Bingham McCutchen LLP. During her fellowship, Della-Piana recruited and trained pro bono attorneys to provide direct legal representation to homeless people charged with infractions related to their homeless status. She began assisting homeless people with their legal pro blems while in law school at the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall). She helped provide legal and criminal defense services to homeless people at the East Bay Community Law Center and Contra Costa County Pu blic Defender’s Office, and participated in grassroots organizing of homeless people at the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. Before beginning her postgraduate work on behalf of homeless people, she served as a clerk to Judge Betty Binns Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge David F. Levi of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

San Francisco, CA  |  One Year |