My Clinic Win: Fighting for Safe and Healthy Housing with the Health Justice Alliance Law Clinic

Last fall, Weston participated in the Health Justice Alliance Law Clinic, in which law and medical students collaborate to help local families and children address the legal barriers that negatively impact their health and well-being. Here, Weston reflects on her clinic experience, including how she helped a family secure healthier living conditions, the benefits of medical-legal collaboration and the importance of thinking holistically to address client needs.

“From the beginning, I knew that the Health Justice Alliance Law Clinic (HJA) wouldn’t be just another class. I wanted to fully immerse myself in the clinic and develop my research skills, practice case management and build my confidence as a student lawyer. I wanted to be able to translate those skills to my future career — and I definitely feel so much more capable now than before.

My clinic partner, Aaron Frazee, L’24, and I took on a case referred by the MedStar Georgetown Kids Mobile Medical Clinic (KMMC), which serves children in vulnerable communities in Washington, D.C. We worked with a family of four who were facing serious respiratory health issues due to mold in their home. The two young children struggled to attend school because of frequent emergency room and doctor’s appointments; the parents were also missing work and suffering health effects.

By the time we started working with them, the family had repeatedly asked the landlord for help without success. We made multiple home visits and sent several demand letters to the landlord, starting with making them aware of the issue and pointing to the requests that our client had already made.

For example, D.C. Code says that if 10 or more square feet of mold is visible, a licensed mold professional must assess and/or remediate the problem. But the landlord maintained that the problem didn’t meet this threshold. We hired a mold specialist ourselves to verify that mold was present and to argue that the “visible” mold requirement applied not just to what the eye could see, but to mold detected with the specialist’s equipment.

We also worked with Georgetown medical students, who provided research on the severity and effects of the three types of mold found in the home, and the family’s KMMC pediatrician, who drafted a letter of medical opinion outlining the link between the family’s health conditions and the mold we discovered.

Our final demand letter included both the pediatrician’s letter and mold specialist’s report. That was the final push: Eventually, the landlord agreed to hire a professional mold remediator. We verified that the specialist was licensed, vetted and would follow the proper cleaning protocol, including safeguards for mold remediation in the presence of lead, because our earlier work had uncovered that lead paint was present in the building, although supposedly not in the unit itself.

We also ensured that the landlord paid for the family’s hotel accommodations during the cleaning process, and that an industrial hygienist performed post-cleaning air sampling to ensure that the remediation process, which was carried out late last year — in time for the family to celebrate the holidays in their home — was successful.

As a student, you’re used to completing an assignment and moving on, but in clinic, there’s never just one issue our clients are facing: You have to approach each case holistically. For example, during our work we discovered that our client was having trouble with their Medicaid renewal and were able to refer them to another HJA team for help. We also researched and helped instruct them on things like how to safely remove mold from their linens and clothing.

Above all, we wanted to make it clear to the family that they had the legal right to a healthy home. It was so impactful to look my client in the eye and say, ‘Your home is going to be clean for good this time,’ and to receive the warmest hug in return. Recently, the family shared that everyone is healthy, the emergency room visits have stopped and the parents are no longer missing work. Knowing that makes the experience all the more rewarding.”

Georgetown Law offers the country’s largest and most highly regarded clinical education program: Every year, more than 300 students participate in our 17 different clinics. Under the supervision of faculty and fellows, they have the opportunity to engage in real-life lawyering. In this series, students share their “clinic wins” — the large and small accomplishments that came through their clinic experiences.