Our Work

The projects we've built, and the actions behind them.

Every project below started as a pattern we saw across our cases — a system that was breaking people instead of helping them. Every action is a piece of that work: a brief filed, a rule changed, a coalition built.

Featured Projects

Our core projects — the standing infrastructure we've built to serve people the system was never designed for.

Shelter Direct

Holistic, concierge-style legal services for shelter residents who are suffering from poverty.

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Street Outreach Court Detroit

A program that allows homeless folks to "pay off" their tickets with efforts to improve their lives.

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Eviction Due Process Benchmarks

An investigation of inequitable housing law enforcement and creation of a due process scorecard.

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Functional Sentencing

A sentencing model that helps people exit poverty and leave the criminal justice system for good.

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Most Recent Actions

A sample of the individual actions — filings, rule changes, coalitions, and wins — that make up the day-to-day of our projects.

December 2025
SOCD Shattered Its Own Record in 2025—322 Graduates and 3,776 Cases Closed

New provider partnerships, better internal systems, and court referrals drove the program's biggest year yet.

December 2025
Shelter Direct - 2025

August 2025
Street Democracy Calls for Free Court Interpreters in All Cases, Not Just Criminal Ones

A proposed rule change would end fee reimbursement for interpreters in criminal cases — we argued it should cover every case, because equal access to courts is the court's job, not the litigant's.

April 2025
PANEL: Evictions and Illegal Lockouts: Developing an Equity-Centered Approach to Housing Laws

March 2025
PANEL: How Can Specialty Courts Increase Access to Justice

Judges and advocates, including our own perspective from Street Outreach Court, discussed how specialty courts like homeless courts reframe what "justice" looks like.

February 2025
MI Statewide Violence and Incarceration Prevention Learning Community

We shared our model with community activists, defense lawyers, and other advocates working to reduce incarceration statewide.