Heading Home - A Discuss with Susan Finegan and Rebecca Lee
[Susan Finegan]
I’m Sue Finegan, I chair the pro bono committee at Mintz and I'm a litigation partner and I'm here with my colleague Rebecca Lee who did some terrific work with one of our nonprofit pro bono clients Heading Home and I'm just thrilled that to be speaking with her this afternoon about her case. Rebecca I'd love to start by just hearing from you about what this case was about, what was at stake with this nonprofit.
[Rebecca Lee]
So, what was at stake was a request from the state of Massachusetts to this nonprofit Heading Home, which is the largest provider of emergency shelter housing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To step in the shoes of an organization called Casa Nueva Vida which was an organization in distress because its executive director had absconded with funds and the organization was on the verge of collapse and our client was asked to step in and take over stewardship of three active emergency transitional housing, emergency shelter facilities that they had in Lawrence and Boston Massachusetts in which, at the time, there were something around 125 residents in these three places and there was a need for someone to step in run them ,provide wraparound services to the residents, and to prevent them from becoming homeless again.
[Susan Finegan]
Wow, what an impactful case like really having such a—making such a difference in so many families lives. So, thanks for taking that on. Can you tell us a little bit about when and how you were approached to take on this matter.
[Rebecca Lee]
Sure, we were approached to take on this matter by a client—a developer client of the firm. A developer that we've worked with a long time and that has a very strong philanthropic and charitable piece of its mission—the Davis Companies. And the Chairman of the Heading Home board is Stephen Davis the Co-president of the Davis Companies and he asked if we might have some ability to help Heading Home acquire these four properties. Three of the properties were operating, one has been vacant since it was acquired in 2019 and, as you know Sue, I came to you and with what I thought was a relatively simple just real estate acquisition of four properties and you said sure and we figured out we probably could use co-counsel on the corporate side because the disposition of all, or substantially all, of the assets of a charitable corporation in Massachusetts requires the involvement of the Attorney General's Office and issues of nonprofit governance and related to that organization's dissolution. So, we brought in Ropes and Gray and they were a terrific co-counsel it was led by a partner there named Devin Cohen and they were wonderful to work with and we really worked as a team. Us very focused on the real estate piece was first of all, this was an inquiry in mid-May and by June thirtieth we had a close on taking over the properties through a license agreement. And then we also needed to then proceed to work with the seller which was going to be dissolving in a two-step process to first get Attorney General and permission of a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to approve the disposition of all of its real estate assets plus a corpus of funds to our client to renovate those assets and we wanted to get that going so Ropes and Gray was very much involved in helping to provide input on that petition. We had weekly meetings with the Attorney General's Office. Everything was very painstakingly worked out because there was just a shell of the seller corporation left and midstream even their executive director left and so we were pretty much just dealing with their lawyer. And so it was not an easy—the corporate side of this was not easy. The real estate side of it is very straightforward and we finally closed on September 29, 2023, about six months after the SJC had approved the sale.
[Susan Finegan]
Well, that's just a lot of collaboration and a lot of complicated work working with all those different parties and really time sensitive matter too. So that’s pretty amazing that you got it all done and in time and saved people's housing. But you have a very active practice on the commercial side and so you know what resonated with you about this particular case you could take on many, many cases but you have time limits and what really resonated you about this case.
[Rebecca Lee]
Well, you know I grew up in a housing project with my seven brothers and sisters in New York City and so I know about crowded housing and we weren't poor by any means but we didn't have a lot of money, but I did grow up with a very strong ethos of those who do well do well to do good. And, you know, my mother was a volunteer at Bellevue Hospital with eight kids at home every Sunday, and so that ethos is very much a part of my family so I also knew that Mintz has an incredible culture of giving and being a good corporate citizen and I realized that A: we had the expertise; B: we could make the time; C: Mintz had the resources to throw at this and; D: this is exactly the kind of thing that Mintz does and; E: the Commonwealth needs to preserve these pieces of real estate as affordable housing, as housing resources were swamped with people who are homeless and the last thing we wanted to do was to put 125 people back out on the street. They've done enough renovations so far so, now the head count today is about 160 people; parents and children. And with the renovations that our clients going to do they think they'll be able to accommodate and another 20 more. So, it—it really came out of the confluence of a lot of factors, some of them personal but many of them really related to the fact that I knew that Mintz would support me completely and that is very much a part of this firm's culture. When we take on a pro bono client and a project, we do it a thousand percent; we're all in. I had great associate help great paralegal help. Had partners to ask questions when something weird came up and it was a truly collaborative effort that I think is completely consonant with what Mintz is about and why I love practicing here, frankly.
[Susan Finegan]
Well, it's a really incredible, extraordinary actually, example of that and well I'm sure you had a lot of challenges along the way and with a complicated corporate and real estate transaction. Could you talk a little bit about some of those challenges?
[Rebecca Lee]
Well one of the most important pieces of this transaction was that the seller had a clientele that was heavily Spanish speaking and so one of the challenges was not only related to the real estate but to ensure that as many, as possible, of the employees of the seller could be brought on and they could operate as a separate division of Heading Home and that's in fact, what happened is that most of the employees became employees of Heading Home and Ropes and Gray was very much involved in that piece of the transaction but we also wanted to make sure on a human level, I mean these are people in crisis who are in these shelters. You know they've experienced homelessness because of a fire or a casualty or they just lost their homes. And so, the last thing that we wanted to do was to have them dealing with totally different case workers and people to help them navigate school, mental health services, physical health services, job training, et cetera. So, that was a really big challenge was to make sure that this was all very opaque to the people who live there that they had no idea that swirling above them at some you know stratospheric level is all this crazy lawyering happening when on a day-to-day basis they were trying to get a T pass or they were trying to get proper work papers or whatever was going on. And so our client had a whole sort of human services piece that they were navigating and we also had to figure out things like intellectual property and personal property and it was all eminently doable. We just had to take a step back occasionally and say, “okay, what are we doing here?” We had to have a wonderful client heading home has an absolutely terrific staff and leadership and very supportive board. So even if we had challenges we knew we had support. And people that were going to help us figure them out.
[Susan Finegan]
That’s great. I guess is my last question I have for you and you touched upon this a little bit and some of your answers previously. But what's the impact of this work? You mentioned a lot of the personal impact on the on the residents that live in this facility but can you talk a little bit more about the impact about your work on the clients and both Heading Home and on the individuals who live there.
[Rebecca Lee]
Sure. Well first of all the physical is that all four of the properties are undergoing significant upgrades. The Executive Director who absconded with money, absconded with money that should have been invested in the properties for their upkeep and their maintenance. So for example, one of our clients is finishing design plans for the shelter that never did open. It was vacant for four years to be turned into fifteen rows that will be new to the housing stock. It will also have an accessible unit and accessible places for formerly homeless people to live is really hard to come by. So, we're really talking about accommodating about one hundred and eighty people who otherwise would not be accommodated, who would literally be out on the street. So, it was very very important to keep these four properties in the housing stock, the affordable housing stock, for the Commonwealth. And it was really important to keep the folks who are there now in a stable situation so that they're personal situations can be stabilized and they can move on to permanent housing. So, it was really important—and one of these properties is in a part of Boston where its value as market rate housing would be considerable but that's not what anybody wanted and so it was really important that we jump on this and make sure that we could respond to the state's request that our client take on these properties and they're running them now and they've got renovation programs for each of the properties and a year from now they're going to be completely upgraded and up to code and newly furnished, new furniture. You know, new paint new roofs, new h-vac systems, and they will be permanently protected as affordable housing.
[Susan Finegan]
Really incredible work. Thank you to you and your team for this extraordinary work on behalf of current residents of the shelters but also future residents of these shelters and for Heading Home generally and just thank you again for your efforts.
[Rebecca Lee]
It's been really a highlight of my professional career and you know my thanks to Mintz for helping to make it possible.