Maria Foscarinis founded the National Homelessness Law Center (formerly known as the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty) in 1985 to mount a campaign for a federal response to the crisis which was just beginning to explode across the country. The Law Center won legal victories including the only major federal legislation addressing homelessness—now known and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act—, upholding education rights for homeless children, converting vacant properties to housing, and combatting the criminalization of homelessness, while also laying the groundwork for the recognition of housing as a human right.
She has been named a Human Rights Hero by the American Bar Association, and is a recipient of the Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize from Santa Clara University School of Law, the John Macy Award from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Public Interest Law Award from the Public Interest Foundation at Columbia Law School, and a Rockefeller Foundation Practitioner Residency in Bellagio, Italy.
Foscarinis has been regularly quoted in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, CCTV, and Al-Jazeera, among many others, and has contributed opinion pieces to influential publications including USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and The Hill. She teaches a seminar on Homelessness Law and Policy at Columbia Law School.