Shriver Center Attorney Wins 2006 Housing Justice Award

Katherine Walz selected 2006 Housing Justice Award Winner by the National Housing Law Project

Katherine Walz of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law won a 2006 Housing Justice Award last week at the Housing Justice Network conference of the National Housing Law Project in Washington, D.C. Walz received the award for her work on affordable housing and low-income housing rights.

The award for Walz, who is a senior attorney at the Shriver Center, recognizes “an energetic and unstoppable activist … who is fearlessly and successfully tackling the systemic and often hostile obstacles that stand in the way of safe, decent and affordable housing for low-income and marginalized people.” Walz was one of two award recipients at this year’s ceremony.

Walz most recently led a class action lawsuit against the Moody Bible Institute’s unlawful conversion of project-based Section 8 housing into student dormitories. With other housing advocates, she is fighting a national trend: universities purchase subsidized housing and attempt to use it as housing for students and thus deprive the original beneficiaries of such housing—the disabled and the elderly.  

Walz is also class counsel in Wallace v. CHA, a case that challenges the Chicago Housing Authority’s discriminatory relocation of residents, and Chicago ACORN v. HUD, a case challenging the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development’s termination of the project-based Section 8 contract of one of the biggest developments in the country. Walz is a leader on the Source of Income Working Group, the Tenants Rights Working Group, and the Safe Homes Initiative.

“In my thirty-plus years as a housing attorney and advocate, I have never worked with such a talented young attorney as Kate Walz,” said William Wilen, the Shriver Center’s director of housing litigation. “She has tackled a myriad of housing issues, adeptly and effectively using the tools in her advocacy arsenal. I cannot envision a more deserving advocate for the Housing Justice Award.”