Mike Rawson has dedicated his 27 years as a lawyer to advocate on behalf of lower income persons in need of affordable housing. He began at the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, where he established the California Affordable Housing Law Project. In 1996, he and co-director Steve Ronfeldt founded The Public Interest Law Project to provide litigation and other advocacy support for California legal services and public interest law offices. Mike focuses on state and federal land use, community redevelopment, fair housing and tenant-landlord law. He has litigated many cases with legal services programs and has drafted many California land use and tenant-landlord statutes. His litigation includes suits addressing the adequacy of local housing elements, displacement of lower income families and discriminatory housing practices. Mike also has authored many articles, book chapters and manuals on these issues.

Steve Ronfeldt, Co-Director and Founder of The Public Interest Law Project, specializes in major litigation on behalf of low-income persons, recently focusing on public benefits issues, including disability rights, disaster relief, Medi-Cal and Medicaid, general assistance, and skilled nursing care. He has also litigated numerous cases involving public housing, freeway relocation, and employment discrimination and has negotiated many community reinvestment agreements with banks, anti-patient dumping agreements with hospitals, and affirmative action agreements with public agencies and corporations. He began his poverty law practice as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow and served as Litigation Director of the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, an attorney with the National Housing Law Project, and Senior Lecturer on Poverty Law and Federal Court Practice at King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis. He was a founder of the California Reinvestment Coalition and the East Bay Community Law Center.

Deborah Collins is a Managing Attorney with The Public Interest Law Project (PILP). Deborah has been with PILP since 2002, and was a Staff Attorney and Managing Attorney of the Solano County office of Legal Services of Northern California for ten years prior to that. She specializes in state and federal laws related to the development and preservation of housing that is affordable to the lower income community including state land use, planning and redevelopment laws, subsidized housing, relocation assistance issues, and fair housing laws. She has also participated in administrative and legislative advocacy regarding local, state, and national housing policies and co-authored the 2001 and 2002 subsidized housing chapter of the California Eviction Defense Manual published by the Continuing Education of the Bar.

Craig Castellanet is staff attorney with the California Affordable Housing Law Project (CAHLP) of the Public Interest Law Project, where he works to enforce housing laws in local land use and redevelopment practices around the state. Over the last 14 years, he has worked in California, Hawai`i and at the national level, on a broad range of affordable housing issues including state housing element law, public housing residents’ right to organize and secure decent and safe housing, eviction defense, criminalization of homelessness, preservation of affordable housing at risk of conversion to market rate, and redevelopment laws. Craig joined PILP in 2004 and previously practiced at Legal Services of Northern California, the Legal Aid Society of Hawai`i, and at the National Housing Law Project.

Angie Schwartz is a staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Project, focusing on improving public benefits programs for children and their families.  Over the last few years, Angie has been instrumental in the passage of AB 1633 and AB 1331, two pieces of legislation aimed at improving foster children’s access to social security benefits and ensuring benefits are in place prior to emancipation. Prior to joining PILP, Angie was a Skadden fellow at the National Center for Youth Law. Angie earned her B.A., Magna Cum Laude, from American University in 1998, and her J.D. with distinction from Stanford Law School in 2004.

Judith Gold is a staff attorney at the Public Interest Law Project, focusing on improving public benefits programs for indigent people. Before joining the Public Interest Law Project in 2008, Judy was a shareholder at Heller Ehrman LLP for over 20 years, specializing in complex, multiparty commercial litigation and consumer class action litigation. She also handled several prisoners' rights cases, as well as class actions and other important cases relating to public benefits programs including General Assistance, SSI, and AFDC. She was a pro bono coordinator for Heller Ehrman for many years, supervising several of its pro bono litigation programs that served indigent defendants in unlawful detainer actions, debt collections, and other matters. Judy earned her B.A. and M.A,. both with distinction, from Stanford University, and her J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1980.

Elizabeth Graber is a Legal Assistant at the Public Interest Law Project, where she provides litigation and program support. She coordinates activities of the Public Benefits Justice (PB&J) taskforce, a result of two Public Benefits Summits in 2007 that brought together advocates from over 30 statewide programs to tackle common issues in public benefits. A graduate of Northwestern University, Elizabeth is dedicated to public interest work and has experience with the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Terre des Femmes (a German human rights organization for women), and Americans for Informed Democracy.

Georgie Feltz has worked as an Administrator and Accountant since the late 1960's at California Indian Legal Services, California Rural Legal Assistance, The Legal Services Corporation and Legal Aid Society of Alameda County. After 6 years as The Public Interest Law Project’s contract bookkeeper, she accepted their part-time job in administration and financial support.