Maria Foscarinis

Maria Foscarinis
Alma mater	Barnard College, Columbia University School of Law
Occupation(s)	Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
Website	www.nlchp.org

Maria Foscarinis is the founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. United States that calls itself "the only national legal group dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness" She is "said to be a major architect of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Act of 1987" now known as the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act.

Foscarinis grew up in a middle class, Greek immigrant family in Manhattan, New York. Foscarinis graduated from the New Lincoln School, received her B.A. from Barnard College and received her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.

Career

Before entering the advocacy field, Foscarinis was a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1981 to 1982. She was a litigation associate from 1982 to 1985. While at the firm she took a pro bono case representing a class of homeless families who had been denied emergency shelter in a federal court case.

In 1985, Foscarinis left her job at the law firm and established and directed the Washington, DC office of the National Coalition for the Homeless. She directed campaigns to enact federal legislation to aid homeless people, including the 1987 McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the first major federal legislation to address homelessness.

In 1989, she founded the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty