BPI Alumni Spotlight: Tim McCormick

Enjoy the latest from our blog series highlighting former BPI staff, fellows, interns, and directors. Today we’re profiling Tim McCormick.

Affiliation with BPI
2015 Summer Intern for Public Housing

Current Position
Rising 2-L at Georgetown University of Law Center in Washington.

Fun fact about yourself
My favorite restaurant is called Taco Burrito Palace 2. It’s around Wrightwood and Halsted. I think in the 90s and 2000s it had a reputation for being kind of a seedy place, but friends and I have been there, and the food is still really good.

Why did you choose to work at BPI?

Though I’m in law school in D.C. right now, Chicago is where I grew up, and I found BPI through the Public Interest Law Initiative [PILI]. I’d been acquainted with BPI previously when I was a community organizer on the Southwest Side of Chicago working on a campaign called Keep Chicago Renting. I saw BPI at The Grassroots Collaborative and thought the organization was well aligned with my political identity.

What unique skills and/or experiences do you bring to your work as a fellow at BPI?

Being Latino and having roots on the Southwest Side of Chicago where there isn’t a lot of public housing, and where there is a need for housing assistance, gives me a unique perspective. I knew that BPI worked on litigation and public housing in other areas of the city, but less so on the Southwest Side, so my experience offers BPI a different perspective. 

Why did you decide to get a law degree after working as an organizer?

 I wanted to do something a little more policy based than the nitty-gritty community organizing I was doing. I think that the law can be a useful tool for community organizing, and that’s something I wanted to explore.

What would you like to do after graduating from law school? 

I’d like to be tied into organizing as closely as possible. I think I want to work directly in community development and do transactional work both on cooperative corporations and housing cooperatives.

What does social justice mean to you?

I think a lot of people have different ideas about what social justice means. For me, it’s reversing the kind of subordinating hierarchies that exist and trying to replace that system.

What is one big lesson that you took away from your time at BPI?

I learned a lot about the Housing Choice Voucher program and the regulations around public housing. I also learned how the Moving to Work Agreements, like the one the CHA and HUD have, affect the public housing authority’s mandate to follow those requirements. In some ways, this was like an intense course on public housing benefits!