USD President's Report 2001

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"PEOPLE IN LOCKED FACILITIES DON'T FEEL NYONE IS ON THEIR SIDE OR ADVOCATING FOR THEM. WHEN YOU

I that he had AIDS, he was r efus ed the apartment . Doherty settled the case for $35 ,000, enough for the man to find more permanent housing. "(An eviction) doesn 't have to be directly related to our clients' HIV status for us to represent them," Doherty says. "Many landlords evict our clients just so they can raise the rent, but moving from place to place is not good for people in this condition ." A Chicago native, Doherty never would have predicted his current role as one of northern California's most ardent fair housing advocates. He entered law school with dreams of working in government or public interest law, but was drawn to disability work when he signed up for USD's mental health law clinic. Within six weeks, he was representing mentally ill clients at hearings, and by his second semester, he was analyzing California's juvenile mental health care facilities . Most of his clients were locked in facilities against their will, their only wish to go home. "People in locked facilities don't feel anyone is on their side or advocating for them," Doherty says. "I would find a lot of these clients at their lowest point in their lives. When you get them some assistance, it is remarkable how they come out of that and stabilize." His experience as a law student landed him a position with the Law Foundation, a nonprofit legal aid corporation created by the Santa Clara County Bar Association. Aside from representing clients, Doherty is co-chair of a community planning group for HIV/AIDS, distributing monies generated by the Ryan White AIDS Fund. And he co-founded a tenants ' union to address the skyrocketing rental market and stop landlord abuse. "The people I work with are frighten ed and misunder - stood," says Doherty, who likely could triple his salary if he worked in private practice, "which makes it challenging, but so rewarding. Advocating for those who would otherwise not be heard is, for me, the best use of my USD education ."

uaRDiaN t's unthinkable to refuse to rent an apartment to someone simply because they suffer from heart disease. It would be plain monstrous to evict them after they've been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Yet when a person with a long-term illness that isn't socially acceptable - HIV, AIDS or mental illness - is Place that stricken individual in California's Santa Clara County, the toughest housing market in the nation, where vacancy rates are less than 3 percent and renting a tiny apartment costs more than $1,500 a month, and ask yourself: What are the chances of this person ever finding a home? Slim to none, according to John Doherty, a 1995 USO law graduate and directing attorney of AIDS Legal Services, a project of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. "Many of our clients have been forced to move out of town," says Doherty, who was hired by the nonprofit legal organization straight out of law school to advocate on behalf of the mentally ill and AIDS victims, with a fo cus on righting housing injustices. Most of Doherty's clients in the past five years have been evicted either due to their health status or the accompanying side effects of illness - loss of job, loss of health insurance - that make paying soaring r ents impossible. At times, other tenants pressure the landlord to have the per son evicted because of his or her illness. Occasio nall y, Doherty handl es outright instan ces of discrimination . In one case, a client marked the "disabled" box on a rental application. The landlord prodded the client to reveal his disability - such questioning is illegal - and when the client replied "juSTICF BRINGS A VOICE TO PEOPLE V\'HO MAY NOT BE ABLF TO SPEAK fOR THEMSELVES. THE WAY TO GET JUSTICE IS TO STAY ACTIVE, STAY OPFN, STAY COMMITTED AND TO ALWAYS EDUCATl- YOURSFLF." \RIK\ ·u111 R, l I , sc11de1J1 en che .\,hon/ '!f l:d11u111on / refused the basic comfort of a home, the outrage is muted, the protest lukewarm. Society often looks the other way.

AND STABILIZE."