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Daniel Douglass’ volunteer work with affordable housing dovetails nicely with his construction law practice in Atlanta, but its origins stretch back to a childhood in South Carolina, where his parents were active in the Presbyterian church. Douglass’s mother set a particularly compassionate example: playing music for senior groups despite arthritis; tutoring neighbors in literacy.

“My interest in this sort of thing was inherited from my family,” Douglass says.

A three-month internship with the DA’s office in Charlotte, North Carolina, hooked him on the legal profession, but not before an internship with the Urban Studies Institute led to a job in social services: “working with people that needed help,” he says. “Primarily financial assistance, food stamps, and things of that nature.”

Construction law wasn’t a foregone conclusion for Douglass, who notes that the most convoluted contracts he encountered at law school involved construction. “The fact pattern just went on forever,” he marvels.

But the firm that hired him, which eventually became Stites & Harbison, had a preponderance of construction clients and it turned out he enjoyed the work. “I think that’s how a lot of us end up where we are,” he says. “Some of it is inclination, but more important: What was the need at the time?”

Douglass’ extensive commercial portfolio spreads across the U.S. “At one point, I knew more lawyers in Philadelphia than I did in Atlanta, because we had so much work up in that area,” he says.

The complexity and geographic range of construction cases, he says, means the contracts typically include arbitration and mediation as alternative forms of dispute resolution. “It tends to be less expensive,” he says. “It tends to be faster and is much more convenient, because you don’t have to go get on a trial calendar and go down to the courthouse with all your witnesses and all your documents. You can actually make arrangements to have the hearings just about anywhere you want.”

In addition, arbitrators tend to know the topic. “Instead of a judge, or a jury of 12 folks off the bus, who don’t necessarily know anything about construction, you get people deciding the case who are experienced with the process and familiar with the industry.”

It was a colleague who encouraged him to join the Initiative for Affordable Housing, a nonprofit that provides social services and transitional housing to homeless and low-income families with children in the Atlanta metro area. Douglass currently serves as board president.

“The idea is to go from being homeless to self-supporting and housed,” Douglass says. “And in some cases, we’ve got clients who have gone on to home ownership. Back in the economic downturn of 2008, we were lucky enough to have some foreclosed houses donated by a particular bank, and we were able to move some of our clients from homelessness to home ownership. They were actually able to buy the houses. That was the silver lining behind the economic crash of ’08.”

The Initiative has 365 units of subsidized housing across four buildings in DeKalb County, and while it generally focuses on rehabilitating existing housing, he says, “we do have one senior center that was new construction from the ground up.” It’s more than housing, too. A project known as re:loom trains people in using floor looms to create retail goods from donated fabrics. “It diverts thousands of pounds of excess textiles from the landfill every month,” Douglas says.

When he’s not working, Douglass, 70, is an avid runner. For 30 years, he’s participated in the Peachtree Road Race, a 10k run held on the Fourth of July, and for several years he’s signed up for Legal Runaround, a 5k fundraiser held by the Atlanta Bar Association. “It’s great with stress relief as well as a mood elevator,” Douglass says. “It’s good to have a hobby.”