National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy
Michael Allen specializes in housing and civil rights issues, and has more than 20 years experience in working with grassroots organizations to influence public policy. A nationally recognized expert on the disability provisions of the Fair Housing Act, Mr. Allen has litigated and lobbied at the federal and state levels, and has appeared frequently in national print and electronic media.
Mr. Allen joined the firm Relman & Associates, in Washington, D.C., in June 2006. For over a decade, he was with the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, where he was a senior staff attorney and director of housing programs. In that position, he provided public policy advocacy in Congress and at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of the housing needs of people with mental disabilities. Since 1995, he has played a leadership role in opposing legislation designed to weaken rights of people with disabilities and others under the Fair Housing Act, and has been instrumental in his support of a nationwide network of disability and legal services lawyers conducting litigation under the Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mr. Allen has written, lectured, and consulted widely on civil rights and NIMBYism. He is a principal author of the report Reconstructing Fair Housing (issued by the National Council on Disability in November 2001), and of the articles “Waking Rip van Winkle: Why Developments in the Last Twenty Years Should Teach the Mental Health System Not to Use Housing as a Tool of Coercion,” “Separate and Unequal: The Struggle of Tenants with Mental Illness to Maintain Housing” and “Why Not in Our Back Yard?” He served as Co-Director of the Building Better Communities Network and the writer/editor of The NIMBY Report, a joint publication of the Network and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
In addition to his focus on housing rights, Mr. Allen spearheaded the Bazelon Center's efforts to oppose involuntary outpatient commitment (IOC). He has worked closely with NARPA and with state-based civil rights advocates to turn aside legislative efforts to expand IOC, and to promote alternative approaches. He has spoken widely on the topic, and appeared on national television and radio. His writing on IOC issues has appeared in The Washington Post, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Psychiatric Services.
From 1985-1995, Mr. Allen was a staff attorney and managing attorney at Legal Services of Northern Virginia, focusing on landlord-tenant and affordable housing cases. He is a 1979 graduate of Georgetown University, and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1985. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the D.C. Bar.