Julia E Devanthéry

Julia Devanthéry joined the Legal Services Center in 2013. She co-teaches the Housing Clinic and directs the Housing Justice for Survivors Project, which she founded at the Legal Services Center in 2017.

The Housing Justice for Survivors Project trains clinical law students to represent tenants who are facing housing instability due to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Students under Julia’s supervision provide direct client representation, develop and litigate impact litigation, conduct housing rights trainings for community members and advocates, and engage in local, state, and federal law reform efforts aimed at improving the housing rights of survivors. In the Spring of 2023, Julia and two 3Ls successfully litigated a jury trial in the Eastern Housing Court, securing a total of $110,000 in damages for the tenant (a survivor of near-fatal domestic violence), the right to remain in her home, and over $100,000 in attorneys fees and costs. Julia and students in the Housing Justice project represented the tenant BHA v. YA, 482 Mass. 240 (2019), in which the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed a domestic violence survivor’s right to raise the Violence Against Women Act defense to a non-payment of rent eviction.

From 2018-2020, Julia was the Dignity for All Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Southern California where she worked to safeguard the civil rights of people experiencing homelessness by challenging criminalization policies and improving conditions within emergency shelters. She developed strategic litigation to attack sexual abuse within county-funded homeless shelters; she was class counsel charged with enforcement of a settlement ensuring that people with disabilities had equal access to city-funded homelessness services; she protected the First Amendment rights of citizens who share food with the homeless and hungry; she sued the City of Los Angeles for unconstitutional towing of vehicles as a means of debt collection against homeless Angelinos; and she led a state-wide integrated advocacy team to plan a campaign advancing a right to housing and increase access to affordable housing for low-income and homeless Californians.