PD&R Quarterly Update: Source of Income Discrimination

Sandra Park serves as the Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Office of the Attorney General, where she leads a team of attorneys, analysts, and other staff to enforce federal, state, and local civil rights laws across New York state. The Civil Rights Bureau challenges discrimination and other violations of legal rights in education, employment, housing, law enforcement, voting, and public accommodations, among other issues.

Sandra previously worked at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project for 16 years. At the national ACLU, Sandra engaged in litigation, policy advocacy, and public education to advance gender equality and the rights of women and girls. Much of her work focused on holding institutions accountable for perpetuating violence and discrimination in housing, law enforcement response, and schools. Sandra’s efforts produced key precedent and new federal and state laws and guidance promoting the civil rights of survivors, fair housing, and unbiased policing of domestic and sexual violence. She also helped lead the ACLU’s ground-breaking lawsuit successfully challenging the U.S. Patent Office’s policy of granting patents on human genes, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, 569 U.S. 576 (2013).

Sandra received the 2024 NYU Law Women Alumna of the Year Award as well as the 2021 Sharon L. Corbitt Award from the American Bar Association for exceptional service and leadership to improving the legal response to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by an attorney. She began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow at the Legal Aid Society of New York and clerked for U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and NYU School of Law.

Philip Tegeler is the Executive Director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a civil rights policy organization based in Washington, D.C. PRRAC’s housing policy work focuses on the implementation of civil rights mandates in the major federal housing programs, including the Housing Choice Voucher program, Public Housing, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, HOME, and the Housing Trust Fund. Mr. Tegeler has written extensively on the application of civil rights law to housing and education policy, including for example, “Section 8 in the courts: how civil rights litigation helped to shape the Housing Choice Voucher program,” Cityscape (forthcoming 2024) (co-author), “Supporting school integration through the federal Housing Choice Voucher program,” in Integration and Equity 2.0: New and Reinvigorated Approaches to School Integration (American Institutes of Research, 2023), and Appendix B: State, Local, and Federal Laws Barring Source-of-Income Discrimination (PRRAC, updated 2024) (general editor). Before coming to PRRAC, Mr. Tegeler worked as staff attorney and legal director with the Connecticut ACLU and served on the clinical faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School.

Dr. Teles is a principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute where he studies policies and programs to increase access to decent affordable housing. Teles currently leads Urban’s work examining rental housing markets following natural disasters and the development of the Urban Housing Market Forecaster. Recent and ongoing research includes evaluation of rent reporting as a pathway to improved financial health, an analysis of the impact of source of income protections on access to low-poverty neighborhoods, and exploration of income limits and payment standards used in housing assistance programs. He holds a PhD in Economics from Tulane University. He published in journals such as Housing Policy Debate, Cityscape, and the Journal of Regional Science and his work has been featured in major media outlets, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR.

Manon Vergerio (she/her) is the Head of Data & Advocacy and a co-founder at Unlock NYC, a women-led tech nonprofit that designs digital tools for fair housing. At Unlock NYC, she designs data-driven, participatory research projects to illuminate how housing bias perpetuates homelessness in New York City. She strategizes with a network of grassroots advocates, community-based organizations, and data collectives to communicate research findings to policymakers, leveraging data for systemic change. She is also deeply committed to building an inclusive, consensus-driven organization where women from all walks of life and socioeconomic backgrounds can thrive.

Manon comes to this work through an interdisciplinary background in community organizing, participatory research, and spatial data analysis. Her practice is firmly rooted in the belief that people most directly impacted by urban injustice are expert problem-solvers equipped to design creative solutions. Prior to starting Unlock NYC, she spent years researching and organizing around housing issues in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, including co-founding the NYC chapter of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data visualization and storytelling collective documenting the eviction crisis.

Moving forward, she hopes to continue working closely with communities, organizers, designers, technologists, and activists to imagine and build radically inclusive cities. She has taught in the Computational Design Practices program at Columbia University (GSAPP) and has guest lectured at NYU, Barnard College, and Queens College. She holds a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and an MS in Design & Urban Ecologies from Parsons School of Design.