Housing Clinic History

The Housing Clinic is a unique collaboration between WATCH and Brandeis University, and works closely with the Boston College Legal Assistance Bureau. The clinic was established at WATCH in 2007 by Brandeis Professor Laura Goldin through her community engaged learning classes. It is currently staffed by trained students who are supervised by Professor Goldin and WATCH's Housing Clinic Coordinator.

Although it is designed primarily to assist with fair and safe housing issues, the clinic is often the first point of contact WATCH has with community members who may benefit from other services and resources. Via the Housing Clinic, WATCH is able to further connect clients to external resources such as food stamps (SNAP), as well as internal programming such as language classes.

You can read even more about the clinic in this article from the Waltham News-Tribune.

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In Fond Memory of: Laura Goldin

Laura Goldin, a professor at Brandeis University founded WATCH’s Housing Clinic in 2007. Laura engaged her students to run the twice-weekly housing clinic to help low-income tenants in Waltham know their rights and apply for services to meet their housing and basic needs. Laura managed the housing clinic for over 10 years until WATCH hired our first part-time Housing Clinic staff in 2018. WATCH now has 3 full-time bilingual case managers serving over 600 households a year and this is all due to Laura’s vision and passionate commitment to ensuring all residents had access to safe and affordable housing.