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By: Bailey P. Hughes ’25
This summer, I had the opportunity to intern at Legal Assistance of Western New York’s (Law NY) Fair Housing Unit, thanks to the Catalyst Public Interest Fellowship Program and the Buffalo Public Interest Law Program. Interning in public interest can be very challenging because it often means going without a paycheck, but the Catalyst Fellowship helps ensure that students can gain meaningful legal experience even if they are not getting paid.
Ensuring that legal experience is accessible aligns with Law NY’s goal to make legal representation accessible. As the Fair Housing intern at Law NY, I felt I was also helping ensure that housing was accessible.
I went into law school thinking I didn’t want to touch property law with a ten-foot pole, but after property with Professor French, I really started to enjoy it. Before starting my internship, I didn’t know what to expect as a Fair Housing intern, but I quickly learned that Fair Housing could intertwine with a lot of different types of law. After helping the attorneys with fair housing, I have enjoyed property law more than I could have imagined. I have learned that fair housing is a perfect blend of torts and property law, all to ensure that people are protected and treated fairly.
Thanks to the welcoming attorneys at Law NY, I also had the opportunity to explore more than fair housing. I was able to shadow an attorney in eviction court and in meetings to place children in classrooms that suit their educational needs. I was also able to use my practice order in eviction court. Since Law NY works to make legal representation more accessible, there is a lot that Law NY does, and I was able to get a glimpse of some of the projects that Law NY takes on.
While I got to attend meetings to hear what other units were working on, I ended up enjoying the fair housing issues the most. Fair housing protects individuals on federal and state levels to ensure that people are not discriminated against for their race, nationality, religion or creed, color, familial status, sex, and disability. New York has included additional protections on top of those already included by the federal government. The New York Human Rights Law also protects age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military status, domestic violence victims, immigration or citizenship status, and source of income. Due to the expansion of the New York Human Rights Law in 2019, some interesting work is coming out of the new protections.
In the society that we live in, with rent in high demand, fair housing is a vital issue. This summer, I had the opportunity to help people who were discriminated against for their lawful source of income and familial status and advocated for differently abled individuals so that they could enjoy their housing the same as other tenants. At Law NY, I had the opportunity to learn about the steps people can take to ensure they are protected and have access to fair housing. But most importantly, I had the ability to advocate for people under the supervision of the Fair Housing Unit.
Overall, I learned more than I could have hoped and loved my summer at Law NY. Again, I would like to thank the Catalyst Fellowship and Buffalo Public Interest Program for helping me have an amazing summer legal experience. Of course, thank you to the Fair Housing Unit and Law NY for ensuring I had an informative and meaningful internship.
Name: Bailey P. Hughes ‘25
Fellowship: Catalyst Public Interest Fellowship Program
Placement: Legal Assistance of Western New York
Location: Rochester, NY
One important lesson I have learned from this fellowship: “It’s best to listen to clients first and ask what kind of outcomes they are looking for before making assumptions about what kind of justice a person wants.”
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