Nisha N. Vyas teaches Problem Solving in the Public Interest and Los Angeles Housing Law and Policy. With a background in community law and fair housing, her advocacy is rooted in the belief that all persons should have access to safe and affordable housing of their choice.

Vyas is currently a Senior Attorney at Western Center on Law & Poverty where her work includes providing support to legal services providers on housing matters, litigation to protect against displacement, and advising on housing policies that are of statewide concern. Prior to joining Western Center, Vyas was the Directing Attorney of Public Counsel’s Homelessness Prevention Law Project and responsible for coordinating its direct legal services programs, including eviction defense and benefits advocacy, for people experiencing homelessness and those at imminent risk of homelessness. She also worked with Public Counsel’s Community Development Project, where her work included providing counsel to community-based organizations, including legal advice and capacity building support to nonprofit affordable and supportive housing providers, and affirmatively enforcing laws to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing and protections against displacement in the region.

In 2010, Vyas was selected as the Jay M. Spears Clinical Teaching Fellow by Stanford Law School. As a Clinical Lecturer and Teaching Fellow with Stanford’s Community Law Clinic, she trained and supervised law students in the representation of low-income clients in a variety of matters, including eviction defense, affirmative habitability cases, and administrative hearings before the local housing authority.

Vyas received her B.A. at University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D. at UCLA School of Law, where she specialized in the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. Her published work includes a recent article in UCLA Law Review’s online project Law Meets World, From Commodities To Communities: Reimagining Housing After The Pandemic, co-authored with Matthew Warren, and Race, Place, and Housing in Los Angeles, co-authored with Shashi Hanuman, in the Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development.