Center Will Participate in Pilot Statewide Housing Security Mediation Program

Center Will Participate in Pilot Statewide Housing Security Mediation Program

The Connecticut Department of Housing (DOH) invited Quinnipiac’s Center on Dispute Resolution (CDR) to participate in a 6-month pilot statewide housing security mediation program to address the looming homelessness crisis expected after the State’s current eviction moratorium ends October 1. 

This new program, which will rely on experienced volunteer mediators, is a joint endeavor involving the CDR, the Law School’s Clinical Legal Education Program, DOH, social service agencies, legal service organizations and Partnership for Strong Communities, a statewide nonprofit policy and advocacy organization dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness.

Program staff will include:

· Executive Director Brendan Holt, an attorney and mediator in private practices, also employed as an adjunct professor and the law school’s Mediation Clinic Director.

· Associate Director Berta Holmes worked for Community Mediation, Inc. (CM) from 1997-2015, and oversaw CM’s housing mediation programs. She also served as the lead trainer for the now defunct state-sponsored Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Program.

· Bilingual Mediation Case Manager, yet to be hired, will maintain the program’s mediation case records; follow-up successful mediations; and serve as a mediator or translator, when needed.

· Mediation Clinic Fellow, Jamie SaintPaul, JD, 2020, will work with DOH and its statewide network of social services to schedule mediations' follow-up successful mediations; and serve as a mediator, when needed.