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Alan W Houseman
Executive Director Center for Law and Social Policy |
Alan W. Houseman is Executive Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy and has held that position since he joined CLASP in 1982. His current work focuses on innovative anti-poverty strategies and the long-term future of civil legal assistance in the United States. Mr. Houseman has a long history of involvement in poverty law advocacy and legal services for the poor. He has been actively involved in federal and state welfare reform issues since 1965 and has worked on health care and family policy issues since the early 1970s. During law school, he was Assistant Director (nationally) of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council and worked closely with Ed Sparer at the Welfare Law Center. In 1968, he was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow with Wayne County Neighborhood Legal Services. In 1969, he founded Michigan Legal Services, a statewide legal services program, which represented poor people's organizations on welfare, health, housing, consumer, prison, mental health, education, and family policy issues. Between 1968 and 1976, he was General Counsel for the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and co-chair of the legal committee of the National Welfare Rights Organization. Between 1976 and 1981, he was a member of the senior staff at the Legal Services Corporation and director of the Research Institute, which Mr. Houseman founded and developed. He has written numerous articles, manuals, papers and books on legal services and poverty law advocacy as well as on welfare policies. In addition to directing the staff of CLASP, Mr. Houseman is currently counsel to the National Legal Aid and Defender association (NLADA) and is a leader of the national efforts to preserve and strengthen the federal legal services program. He is on numerous committees of the American Bar Association and has been Chair of the Civil Committee and a past member of the board and executive committee of NLADA. Mr. Houseman has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center and has previously taught at Wayne State University Law School and the University of Michigan Law School. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and New York University School of Law, where he was a Field Fellow in Social Welfare Law (as part of the Hays Civil Liberties Fellowship Program).