Norrinda Brown Hayat, an award-winning housing advocate and expert on housing law with more than 15 years of experience, will be joining Fordham Law this year as a full-time faculty member and head of a new housing clinic.
Hayat comes to Fordham Law after a long and varied legal career, with time spent working in private practice and at the Department of Justice before her pivot to housing advocacy and clinical work. These experiences, and the decisions she made along the way, inform her goals for her clinical work at Fordham.
Early Years
After majoring in history at Dartmouth, Hayat attended the University of Virginia School of Law before practicing at DLA Piper and Hogan & Hartson. After a few years of working on cases related to insurance law, medical device litigation, and white collar crime litigation, Hayat began feeling that she wanted to make a change.
“I didn’t know what to do next, per se, but I knew that I was not doing what I should be doing with my life,” said Hayat. She decided to join a boutique firm in Philadelphia that focused on civil rights work to develop her skill set in that area, with the goal of eventually working for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Going from huge international firms to a small practice was a big change, Hayat says, but she’s glad she decided to take the risk. “It could have been perceived—by myself and others—as taking a step backwards,” she said, “but it was really pivotal for me to do that, to take some time to gain expertise in the thing I wanted to do next.”
At her new firm, Hayat began her civil rights law practice, ultimately arguing an employment discrimination case before the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. “I was given a lot of responsibility and experience in a short period of time … my experience finally caught up with my ability, and that time changed the trajectory of my career,” she said. In just a year, Hayat was able to reach her goal and land a job as a trial attorney at the DOJ.
First Experience With Housing Law
Hayat’s journey to housing law started with a serendipitous event during her application to the DOJ. When applying, DOJ applicants rank the section that they’re most interested in and are assigned based on the needs of the department. Hayat didn’t get placed in her top choices (employment and education-related civil rights) and was instead placed in the housing section.
“I went to housing without really knowing any civil rights housing law, but it became a fabulous job, one I highly recommend to folks who are interested in civil rights work,” she said.
Housing law turned out to be a natural fit for Hayat and she is enthusiastic when explaining the different ways that housing impacts so many other elements of civil rights work. “It’s so fundamental to every other thing,” she said. “In America, and most places, where you live determines where you go to school … your access to employment and resources, whether you’re in a food desert or not, environmental justice, [even]policing became a huge issue for the department while I was there.”
In one case, Hayat saw just how these issues intersect. The case involved an Ohio landlord who, over many years, routinely pressured vulnerable women to exchange sex for rent. Though a sizable settlement was reached for the women involved, Hayat was struck by just how large the problems she was facing were.
“This is happening everywhere,” said Hayat. “What I’m personally left with, in retrospect, is how many people we didn’t file a case on behalf of, how widespread we know this is, how horrible it is, how it wrecks whole lives. This landlord is not an anomaly in any way, and this is the kind of conduct that goes under the radar of our justice system in most cases.”
Clinical Work and Advocacy
Hayat stayed at DOJ for nine years, but the constant travel the role required became a strain and she began considering alternatives. “I always had teaching on my radar” she said, and she eventually joined the faculty of the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia, where she also led a housing clinic.
Her time in D.C. offered an opportunity to expand the focus of her work, exposing her to the city’s long local history of progressive housing policies, like rent control and co-op movements.
“[That experience] broadened my lens, from just civil rights work and discrimination work to the affordability crisis and the movement to create a right to housing,” Hayat said. “It really opened my eyes to other parts of housing law and the affordability space.”
A few years later, Hayat took on a position at Rutgers University as the director of the Civil Justice Clinic. There, all her work over the last 15 years “started to gel,” she says, as she took on cases at the intersection of a number of complex socio-economic issues. And when the COVID-19 pandemic started, these issues became all the more clear, as many struggled to remain housed amid job losses and an ongoing public health crisis.
“The pandemic really underscored what people who have been doing housing work for years knew, which is that millions of people are living two weeks or one paycheck away from being evicted,” she said. “It’s a public health crisis for families to be on the street, whether in COVID times or not. That narrative is one that we need to continue to discuss going forward.”
In 2022, Hayat presented at a White House summit, where she advocated for law schools to help address the eviction crisis caused by the pandemic. Law schools and law students can and have played a crucial role, she said, including helping tenants sign up for emergency rental assistance, filing paperwork with their landlords to prevent evictions, and representing tenants at hearings.
Looking To The Future
Now, at Fordham Law, Hayat will be leading a housing clinic that brings her skills and knowledge to New York, a city at the forefront of housing issues in the United States.
Affordable housing continues to be a hot topic in the city, as record-breaking rent increases have hit renters, in part because of a market “correction” as the city bounces back from shutdowns.
At the same time, New York also has a history of progressive housing policies, is home to the largest stock of public housing in the country, and is a leader in the right to housing movement. “This is a place where these issues … rent control, affordability, mobility … are played out at the largest scale,” Hayat said. “That is exciting for me—to teach students in this environment.”
But before the clinic’s work ramps up in the spring semester, Hayat said she wants to take time to get to know the housing landscape in the city and to hear from the housing and tenant community about what their needs are. “We’re working with students that need to get a certain pedagogical experience out of this, but we also recognize that we want to be of deep service to whatever slice of the community we begin working with,” she said.
“I think the reception of the community—the broader Fordham community and the broader New York community—to the news that Fordham is starting a housing clinic, has been tremendous,” said Hayat. “It indicates not only a deep need for legal assistance in the housing space in New York, despite the right to counsel … but also people’s belief in Fordham’s and our ability to train excellent lawyers to do this work.”