A nonprofit design professional, Joe Corbin ’27 helped organizations in New York City find design solutions during the pandemic and the recent migrant housing crisis. He hopes to gain more tools through his law degree to continue his work in building resilient communities.
What is your hometown, and where did you study as an undergraduate?
I grew up in the Bronx, NY, and graduated from SUNY Geneseo.
What led you to apply to law school?
I was—and probably still am at heart—a nonprofit design professional focused on architecture, urban planning, and urban design. During COVID, I was heavily involved in assisting New York City and State governments and other interest groups in responding to various spatial or building issues related to the pandemic. A big one was the creation of the NYCxDesign Corps, a scrappy initiative to aid in the implementation of New York City’s now ubiquitous Dining Out NYC program. It was essentially one part matchmaker between struggling restaurants and architecture firms, one part prototype lab, and one part advisory group to City agencies.
Design Corps was a collective that designed over 100 new structures well, cost-effectively, and innovatively to such an extent that we were the go-to group for advice on what good outdoor dining design in a New York context looks and performs like.
The New York City government is now facing another critical issue with a spatial component: the migrant housing crisis. Thanks to past successes at this odd intersection of emergency response and design, I was contacted by government colleagues I knew well to see how or if the nonprofit I represented could help. Naturally I agreed and began to learn quickly about housing rights and their basis in law, particularly the Callahan consent decree and Cosentino v. Perales.
Without going into detail, the experience was disheartening and we could not continue the work. Much of the rights enumerated in these laws were intentionally disregarded for understandable but, to me, inexcusable reasons. It was a hard lesson to experience in real time the limits of my capabilities and the inaction it resulted in. It was this experience in particular that motivated me to apply to law school.
A person’s right to a space with dignity, while codified in law, is better understood in spatial terms. It is a different kind of thinking than what one typically finds in the legal profession, and it is my intention to help bridge that gap.
What made you choose Fordham Law?
One of the alumni I spoke to explained to me how Fordham Law uniquely offered the right mixture of rigorous education and an alumni network well versed in the topics I am interested in. Plus, Fordham is right across the street from Lincoln Center, and I love the Upper West Side.
What do you hope to do with your law degree in the future?
I hope to merge it with my architecture and design background to help build more resilient communities.
What is something interesting about you that people may not know?
I love to bike and hike to a degree bordering on the absurd. If I have no plans for a day I will probably start to go on a quick bike ride that turns into a 40-mile trek around the Bronx. An annual tradition of mine is to climb a mountain. This summer, I summited Mount Olympus in Greece!
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