It started in a burned-out building in the east Harlem section of the city of New York. The place wasn't heated, and all the windows were broken. It was 1984, and Doug Lasdon worked alone in his office of the Legal Action Center for the Homeless.

 

This wasn't inevitable from the perspective of a typical law student who majored in entrepreneurial management and then got his degree. But Lasdon is not your typical student, or entrepreneur, or attorney. As he has said, "Financial reward is only one aspect of a fulfilling career—there are so many other rewards that make it worthwhile. The work I do is interesting, meaningful, and really fun."

The work Lasdon does is something few others do: he represents the rights of the homeless. He began working at the Covenant House, a Manhattan shelter for homeless teenagers. He discovered that many of the teenagers had been in foster care but had to leave and fend for themselves once they turned 18. Lasdon determined to fight for them.

"I found one sentence (in the City code) that became my modus operandi,'' Lasdon says. "It said the state and the city must supervise kids in foster care who have been discharged to independent living until age 21. That doesn't mean a token and directions to a men's shelter.''

He won the case, and then, with the aid of a $25,000 grant, founded the Legal Action Center. His actions drew media attention, and soon he headed a staff of six, including another attorney, two advocates, a part-time fund raiser, and a full-time volunteer. All of them are activists for the city's homeless: They manage a soup kitchen, conduct research projects and publish their reports, facilitate legal clinics, and provide outreach, referral, and community education. His annual budget grew to $175,000. His guiding principle: "The homeless aren't just embarrassing statistics, but individual human beings." At the time, there were at least 20,000 of those human beings living on the streets of New York.

Lasdon has been lauded many times as a caring person, but his response is typically—well, atypical:

"'You're such a good person to spend your life helping others,' and that implies that I've given up something in my life. The reason it rankles me is because I'm not altruistic. I'm very selfish. I have chosen a career that will help me, that's going to be fun for me, interesting for me, and it happens to be helping other people. So I'd rather be thought of as wise than altruistic. And I actually think it has more do with wisdom than it does altruism."

Wisdom, altruism, or something else entirely, the homeless have a friend in Doug Lasdon. And it may be good to have a friend with Doug Lasdon's philosophy:

"If it offends your sense of justice, there's a lawsuit. That's my saying.''

Update: The Legal Action Center turned into the Urban Justice Center and continued to grow and be successful. The office is now located in lower Manhattan and houses nine projects and a staff of 75. In 1990 the center sued and won a case against New York City, the Transit Authority, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York State on behalf of three homeless men and one homeless woman because of lack of public toilets. Other cases established the right of homeless married couples to remain together in city shelters and required the City and State to reduce population limits in two overcrowded armory shelters. The Center's goal is to defend "the rights of people who are overlooked or turned away by other organizations," from sex workers to street vendors to Iraqi refugees. Lasdon also teaches a course in "Law and Urban Problems" at New York University.