Parallel Service: An Introduction to BIDS Board Member Michelle Ewert
by Caroline Zuschek, Capital Appellate Defender
Michelle Ewert took a circuitous route to serving on the Kansas State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services. Raised with a strong service ethic, Michelle spent part of her childhood in East Africa and traveled in Latin America, where she encountered people who survived on few resources and had little economic or political power. She dreamed of continuing to provide aid in the places most needing it by joining the Peace Corps, but during college at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, she fell in love with Urban Studies, and particularly, the vibrant and messy city of Chicago.
So, she joined AmeriCorps instead. “At the Chicago Public Housing Buy-Back Recycling Program, my job was to ride around the public housing developments in a recycling truck and collect paper and cans and other recycling from the residents,” she tells me. “We paid the residents fair market value for the recyclable materials, and by doing so, we reduced the amount of trash ending up in landfills.”
It was during her recycling runs that she became fascinated with housing policy in general and subsidized housing in particular. She saw how discriminatory site placement concentrated subsidized housing in low-income, Black neighborhoods with limited economic opportunities and how disinvestment in the public housing program led to the physical deterioration of the buildings. So, following her time in AmeriCorps, Michelle attended graduate school at the University of Minnesota, where she obtained a Masters of Public Policy. Then, she went to law school at the University of Wisconsin.
At all times, she pursued her passion for better housing policy. “Housing is connected to everything,” she tells me passionately, describing the negative ripple effect of unstable housing on an individual. “Children do better in school when they aren’t couch surfing, employment is easier to maintain when you have a place to call home, and victims of abuse are more likely to flee dangerous situations when safe alternative housing is available.”
“And,” she continues, “Having a criminal record is a significant barrier to housing. Imagine a client who is released from incarceration and who likely has no resources. The best option might be for that individual to live with family, but a criminal record likely prevents that person from being authorized as a resident in subsidized housing. At the same time, the private rental market is likely too expensive, and many private landlords also screen for criminal history. So, where is the person supposed to go? It starts a cycle where legal problems cause housing problems, which cause continued legal problems.”
In pursuit of her passion for increasing access to safe, affordable housing, Michelle has worn many hats. She worked at HOPE Fair Housing Center in Wheaton, Illinois, where she represented victims of housing discrimination. Then, she worked as a legal aid attorney at Central California Legal Services in Visalia, California, where she represented survivors of domestic violence and child abuse, including people who were living in encampments or who had fled their home due to violence. Finally, as a staff attorney and housing-law supervisor at the Homeless Persons Representation Project in Baltimore, Maryland, she represented people experiencing homelessness who were trying to access subsidized housing and tenants in subsidized housing who were threatened with eviction. In each role, Michelle advocated for low-income clients who would otherwise have been without counsel.
She speculates this might be why Governor Kelly selected her to be on our Board: “My work has run parallel with the work you do. I see the consequences of a criminal conviction on other areas of an individual’s life. And, I understand the emotional fatigue of confronting systemic problems. I understand the toll this kind of work takes on attorneys and staff.” And, she laments, it is only getting harder. “The pandemic exacerbated the housing and economic instability already facing so many Americans,” she explains, “And now more people qualify for free legal services, placing extra pressure on already overburdened civil legal services and public defender systems.”
For the past eight years, Michelle has been teaching the next generation of lawyers to advocate on behalf of indigent clients, first as a clinical teaching fellow at the University of Baltimore School of Law and now as a professor at the Civil Clinic at Washburn University School of Law. She moved to Topeka in 2017 for the job at Washburn after she fell in love with Washburn’s commitment to the community. At the clinic, she supervises upper level law students who provide pro bono representation to community members in consumer-protection, landlord-tenant, public-benefits, elder law, estate planning, and criminal-record expungement cases.
She was teaching in the clinic just before our call. Today’s topic was expungement. “Expungement laws vary from state to state. Kansas is more progressive than some states because it allows the expungement of many criminal convictions,” she tells me. “Still, unpaid fines and fees prevent low-income individuals from expunging many records so the system doesn’t always work as well as it could. The students today were horrified to learn that the people who would most benefit from expungement – because it would help them get better paying jobs to support themselves and their families – can be denied expungement due to their indigency.”
Michelle says seeing the magnitude of need has been the most challenging part of serving on the Board. “It is daunting,” she admits, “To figure out how to get the agency more resources, and how to use the resources we have more effectively to get everyone – attorneys, staff, and clients – what they need.” But, she said, the Board is a labor of love. She says she is inspired by meeting people who do the job as a public defender because they truly believe in the work. She loves working with people who are passionate about justice and about providing constitutionally-required services to those who most need those services. Plus, she says, “It is really cool to help shape what the system looks like. We are building something great!”
When Michelle isn’t passionately advocating for justice, she loves listening to classical music, and is on the Board for the Topeka Symphony Orchestra. She also loves biking on local trails, hiking, NoTo, and Kansas beer. Her favorite place for a beer is the Happy Basset Barrel House and her favorite area restaurant is The Wheel Barrel. When school is not in session, Michelle also provides respite foster care for children aged 10-18.
To close out our interview, I ask Michelle if she has any advice for the warriors of BIDS. She laughs, “No, I just want to say thank you,” she says, “thank you for helping your clients, who are also my clients. Thank you for your service to the community.”