Marie Claire Tran-Leung named new Legal Impact Network Director

The Shriver Center on Poverty Law is pleased to announce Marie Claire Tran-Leung has been named the new Director of our Legal Impact Network, a dynamic collaborative of advocacy organizations from across the country working with communities to end poverty and achieve racial justice at the federal, state, and local levels. 

Marie Claire is a longtime leader at the Shriver Center, where she currently serves as director of the Partnership for Just Housing. The Partnership works with advocates and justice-involved individuals throughout the country to advance model laws and policies that give individuals who have had contact with the criminal legal system a fair chance at housing and to curb the growth of crime-free and nuisance property ordinances. She is also a 2016 alumna of the Shriver Center’s Racial Justice Institute.

Marie Claire is the author of the nationally recognized publication, When Discretion Means Denial: A National Perspective on Criminal Records Barriers to Federally Subsidized Housing, which documented how public housing authorities and other federally assisted housing providers throughout the country used blanket bans and other draconian policies to deny individuals with criminal records a chance to secure affordable housing.  

She also recently led the Shriver Center’s efforts to respond to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rollback of the affirmatively further fair housing and disparate impact rules. Marie Claire also led the push for the Just Housing Amendment in Cook County. The amendment prohibits housing providers in Cook County from discriminatory blanket bans against housing applications from individuals with past involvement in the criminal legal system. 

Marie Claire is an experienced litigator, having worked on important impact litigation and supporting other cases through the filing of amicus briefs.  

Meet Marie Claire Train-Leung.