The School of Law’s Center on Dispute Resolution launched a Homelessness Mitigation Mediation Program (HMMP) in February 2021. In January 2022 HMMP’s contract to provide statewide mediation services under the Connecticut Department of Housing’s “UniteCT” program was renewed until September 2022.
Brendan Holt, an adjunct law professor and director of the Mediation Clinic at Quinnipiac, is the program’s Executive Director. “The Department of Housing was looking for landlord/tenant mediation expertise in the context of COVID-related homelessness relief,” Holt said. “The goal was and still is to both help tenants maintain their housing stability and landlords gain back some of the funds lost through COVID-related nonpayment of rent to keep them viable and keep their properties running. We want to help these folks come to some potential arrangement that works for both sides while increasing housing stability. “Mediation humanizes the process,” Holt added. “Sometimes, creative solutions can come up when you bring both sides to the table. It’s a pressing need. We want to level the playing field and make sure everyone is heard.” “The idea also is to make this a helpful academic endeavor for the clinic and the students who are taking it,” Holt said. “The goal has been to have students either co-mediate or be involved in observing mediations, so it adds to their education and the mediation varieties we hope to expose them to as future lawyers.”
The HMMP staff also includes Associate Director Berta Holmes, who for many years was the eviction and foreclosure prevention program manager and housing mediation trainer at Community Mediation Inc. in New Haven and Hamden. Program staff also includes Senior Mediation Fellow, Diana Lamb. Lamb joined the project soon after her graduation from QUSL in 2021 with a concentration in Civil Advocacy and Dispute Resolution and Family Law. At graduation, she received the Judge F. Owen Eagan Annual Book Award for graduating students demonstrating the most promise in the field of Dispute Resolution.
In Diana's role, she is responsible for direct communication with mediation-referred clients, helping them with traditional mediation sessions as well as providing information and facilitating possible options to stabilize their housing situations. Diana is also involved in the coordination of communication with and between the Department of Housing staff and its contracted partners as well as the programmatic data collection and analysis. The program also has a bilingual Mediation Services Coordinator who serves as a mediator when needed.
The HMMP is now a partnership involving the Center on Dispute Resolution and the law school's Clinical Legal Education Program.