Julia Linares
The Project
At Legal Aid Chicago, Julia (she/her/hers) will work with low-income Cook County families to avoid losing their homes when the original owner dies, and the “tangled title” makes it difficult for the heirs to maintain and preserve the property.
This project seeks to reduce the racial wealth gap through effective property transfers. For most low-income and middle-income families, the home is the largest asset. By getting heirs on title, the project protects this asset through an improved ability to negotiate mortgage modifications and access to tax savings plans and homeowner tax exemptions.
As the first lawyer in her lineage, Julia’s parents sacrificed to give her a better life than they had known. Through this Fellowship, Julia hopes to use her newfound stability to advocate for others seeking it.
Fellowship Plans
During her Fellowship, Julia will address housing title issues both proactively and reactively. She will host community clinics and presentations on low-to-no-cost estate planning mechanisms to help individuals transfer their property. For individuals who have a right to the house they live in and are not on the deed, Julia will work to get them on the deed. Once on, Julia will assist individuals with accessing programs and services that will keep the housing affordable, and ultimately, preserve their housing and wealth.
The Project
Eviction court is a harrowing experience. Eviction proceedings operate on an expedited timeline with a lessened pleading standard and most defendants are impoverished; few have access to counsel, leaving vulnerable tenants subject to abuses. Among other unscrupulous practices, landlords try to keep tenants out of eviction court altogether with “sewer service” or by filing evictions in the wrong venue. Many defendants are never given any detailed accounting of their debts, with many landlords taking advantage of this to inflate charges. Often, they try to unjustly tack on legal fees in settled cases or even outright invent non-existent debts. Eviction law offers little protection against these abuses.
Though tenants are consumers, consumer protection laws are rarely, if ever, used to protect them. Consumer protection laws, however, may offer protection against fraudulent or dishonest filings, allowing tenants to stave off evictions, reduce their debts, and access their full rights. Matt’s experiences in direct service and love for Chicago led him to pursue a legal career dedicated to furthering access to the fundamental right of housing for its residents.
Fellowship Plans
Matt will spend the next two years working at Legal Aid Chicago to represent tenants facing eviction in Cook County, Illinois in cases where landlords: (1) seek eviction based on false or misrepresented money claims–e.g., unlawful late fees, overcharged rent or utilities, etc.; and (2) try to prevent tenants from appearing in eviction court, by filing in the wrong city or using “sewer service.” He hopes to bring a consumer protection approach to eviction cases in order to better defend tenants, particularly in cases where eviction is based in part on false claims. At the end of the fellowship, he will train others in the consumer protection strategies that were most effective, creating a “toolkit” for other lawyers in the housing/evictions space.
As a social worker on the West Side of Chicago, I saw just how foundational access to stable housing can be and just how precarious housing is for so many. I came to law school in the first place in hopes of securing and protecting this foundational right.
Matt Maxson /
2024 Equal Justice Works Fellow
The Project
Larkin (she/her/hers) will work to improve living conditions and mitigate health disparities in East St. Louis, Illinois, and other Metro East area communities by representing tenants in housing habitability and eviction disputes and launching a medical-legal partnership with SIHF Healthcare to educate healthcare staff and patients about legal rights, and create efficient systems for patient referrals.
Once a booming industrial city, today East St. Louis bears the scars of loss of industry, dramatic depopulation, white flight, and two centuries of institutional and structural racism. As of 2022, 94.6% of East St. Louis residents identified as Black or African American, and 31.6% lived in poverty. Laws meant to ensure the safety of rental units are rarely enforced in East St. Louis. As a result, East St. Louisans face blatantly dangerous housing conditions—including sewage overflows, mold, pests, and vermin—and related severe health disparities.
Larkin decided to pursue a career in law after studying global health as an undergraduate student in the St. Louis Metro Area. She believes the law is a critical tool in combating systemic inequalities that contribute to disparities in healthcare in the St. Louis area and beyond.
Fellowship Plans
Larkin will pursue affirmative litigation against landlords who fail to maintain the safety of their units and defend clients with habitability matters from eviction. Larkin will also launch a medical-legal partnership with SIHF Healthcare. Through this partnership, Larkin will educate health care providers and community members about legal rights, identify clients in the greatest need of legal assistance, and work to ameliorate health disparities in Metro East area communities.
Media
I have seen firsthand the power of public health interventions and direct legal services. I’m excited to use both of these tools to help my clients vindicate their basic human right of having safe and healthy housing.
Larkin Levine /
2024 Equal Justice Works Fellow
The Project
Melissa’s (she/they) project will provide legal representation, outreach, and advocacy to unsheltered individuals and families in Chicago through a specialized community lawyering service delivery model.
The number of people experiencing street homelessness in Chicago is rising. CCH’s 2023 Homeless Estimate Report estimates that 68,440 Chicagoans experienced homelessness in 2021, an approximate 4.3% increase from 2020. Of these, 7,985 more people were staying in shelters or on the streets. Disturbingly, 82% percent of people experiencing homelessness in Chicago are people of color. Chicago is also experiencing an ongoing humanitarian crisis with many newly arriving asylum seekers remaining unsheltered, resulting in urgent and new pressing needs amongst these populations requiring tailored legal support. Many asylum seekers are families with children, a differing demographic than is normally present living on the streets. They, and others unhoused, need connections to permanent housing opportunities, education aid, and sustainable means of accessing aid for their legal needs.
Unsheltered folks often confront high degrees of instability and lack access to transportation, the internet, and stable modes of communication. On top of their already daunting circumstances, these same people are often then subjected to unjust criminalization for engaging in necessary life-sustaining activities like sleeping and sitting in public. People experiencing homelessness need direct unobstructed pathways for legal aid access to promote long-term housing stability, better-understood needs of those served, and protection of their civil rights and liberties.
Melissa was inspired to pursue this project after her work with historically harmed communities of color, including urban Indigenous peoples in the Denver Metro area and low-income Black and Latiné communities across Chicago. She has witnessed firsthand how access to legal services and advocacy can be a lifeline to those most disenfranchised and set up to fail.
Melissa’s family experienced housing insecurity after the birth of her youngest sibling with Down syndrome and his related medical bills during the almost simultaneous 2008 housing crisis. This personal experience informs her deep passion and commitment to housing justice.
Fellowship Plans
During her Fellowship, Melissa will work with the Law Project for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to provide outreach, education, legal services, and representation to people who are unhoused or unstably housed. Melissa’s work incorporates direct street outreach to meet clients where they are literally staying–bringing legal services to unsheltered clients in street and community settings. Throughout the project, Melissa will collaborate with the unsheltered community and persons with lived experience of homelessness to account for unique developments in the growing street homelessness crisis, with the intention of promoting broader policy advocacy to address systemic problems and work towards ending homelessness.
As a child, my family faced housing insecurity due to unexpected destabilizing medical bills. So, I am honored to work as an EJW Fellow to address the tenuous access to justice for unhoused and unstably housed folks. A holistic and compassionate legal approach to identify and address the unique needs of unhoused street-based folks in Chicago is necessary.
Melissa West /
2024 Equal Justice Works Fellow
The Project
Indigo’s project will focus on starting a new Court Watch program in Baltimore City Rent Court in partnership with Baltimore Renters United.
In Baltimore City, less than a quarter of tenants who face eviction hearings have any access to legal advice. Black tenants and women are especially hard hit—currently, over 90% of tenants in Baltimore facing eviction each week are Black, and almost 70% are women, which perpetuates the marginalization and inequality these tenants already face in other areas of life. In most cases, these tenants have a valid eviction defense but do not know their rights and are unable to use these defenses to avoid evictions.
Indigo became passionate about Baltimore’s eviction courts after starting a tenants’ union with their neighbors to fight mass evictions initiated by their landlord in the summer of 2020. They watched dozens of their neighbors, the majority of whom were Black and queer, get put out, turning their building from a lively art and music community to an empty shell. Indigo saw firsthand the way their neighbors’ lives were destabilized by a landlord who wasn’t even operating legally, and they vowed from that point on to battle the system that allowed such injustice.
Fellowship Plans
In partnership with Baltimore Renters United, Indigo will help tenants connect directly with non-profit legal advice and representation to help ensure they know their rights and have support in battling eviction cases. The Rent Court Watch program will collect data on what is happening in Baltimore City’s courts to monitor things like tenant demographics and access to representation. The program will also collect tenant’s firsthand accounts of their experiences and partner with local media outlets to uplift their stories and bring awareness to what happens in the courts. Indigo hopes to use the Rent Court Watch program to prevent evictions and bring more attention from legislators, advocates, and the general public to address the inequality in Baltimore’s Eviction Courts.
Rent Court Watch will help tenants stay in their homes and communities. I was evicted myself, and know the lasting harm it does. Baltimore’s Black community battles so many challenges - arming them with knowledge and the ability to advocate for themselves is crucial.
Indigo Null /
2024 Fellow in the Housing Justice Program
The Project
Annie’s (she/her/hers) Fellowship with the Maryland’s Tenants’ Right to Counsel Project (TRCP) ensures that income-eligible tenants can access free legal representation during eviction proceedings.
Despite the violence, trauma, and long-term ramifications of losing a home, the vast majority of tenants who face eviction proceedings do so without any legal assistance. Research shows that tenants who have legal representation achieve much better outcomes and are more likely to stay in their homes. In 2021, Maryland passed a bill, making it the second state in the nation to provide access to counsel to tenants facing an eviction. Maryland’s Tenants’ Right to Counsel Project is critical to counterbalance the disparate bargaining power between landlords and tenants, and to interrupt systems that keep people in poverty.
Fellowship Plans
Annie works with Maryland Legal Aid’s Statewide Advocacy Support to ensure that the TRCP is implemented effectively and equitably. Her work during this Fellowship includes legislative advocacy, supporting appellate work, and coalition building with other tenant advocate groups. She will also provide direct representation to tenants, including day-of court representation for tenants facing eviction.
Nationwide, tenants are organizing and advocating for affordable and safe housing. This work is intertwined with and depends on economic justice, racial justice, and other struggles that seek to dismantle systemic oppression. Similar to workers in the labor movement, when tenants get together to fight for better living conditions, we are bound to succeed.
Housing is more than a physical structure. Housing is home—and home is integral to our identity, our connection to community, and our sense of belonging and safety. When we fight for our home, and all that encompasses, we fight for our dignity as human beings.
Annie Toborg /
2022 Housing Justice Program Fellow
The Project:
Natali (she/her/hers) provides low-income tenants with a right to counsel and other legal services when they are facing eviction or living in unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions to ensure their rights to stable and secure housing.
This project seeks to address the lack of legal representation for low-income tenants facing housing related legal issues. Black and Latinx low-income communities disparately face housing insecurity. Being a first-generation Latina immigrant herself, whose parents struggled for a long time to find stability when they first arrived, this topic is a personal one for Natali. That is why she chose to work in this field of law. Natali will provide free and adequate legal counsel to low-income community members facing housing instability. She plans to accomplish this through her work on eviction defense, housing code violation cases, and community outreach to help communities know their rights regarding access to safe and secure housing. Everyone should have the right to properly be heard through the guidance of appropriate legal counsel to achieve fair and just outcomes.
Fellowship Plans:
Natali will address this by focusing on the Access to Counsel in Eviction Program (ACE) at Maryland Legal Aid. In ACE, Natali will use her lawyering skills to help provide direct client services and conduct community outreach. She will work with her colleagues to address the systemic issues found in low-income tenant’s lack of access to counsel when facing housing insecurity and unsafe housing conditions to create a proactive approach instead of a reactive one. Since she is also fluent in Spanish, she will dedicate her efforts to help tenants who feel more comfortable speaking Spanish.
The Project
Caroline Tripp (she/her/hers) promotes housing stability by representing low-income tenants in eviction proceedings and rent escrow actions.
Maryland housing law incentivizes landlords to file for eviction to collect rent. Between 2000 and 2018, there was an eviction filing rate of 83.3%, a number more than ten times the 7.7% rate for the other 49 states. As a result, Baltimore County has a failure to pay rent docket of over a thousand cases daily. Systematic inequalities are visible in rent court, in 2022 more than 90% of landlords have counsel compared to less than 10% of tenants.
Fellowship Plans
During her fellowship, Caroline will implement Maryland’s recent Access to Counsel in Evictions legislation, which provides low-income tenants with legal representation in eviction proceedings. Her legal work will include fighting evictions and enforcing tenants’ rights to safe and habitable housing through rent escrow cases. She will also be engaging in community outreach, educating tenants about their rights, and mobilizing people living in dangerous conditions.
Caroline is from Maryland and is excited to return to her home state and give back to the community that shaped her. She is grateful that her fellowship gives her the opportunity to engage with tenants through outreach.
I’m grateful my Equal Justice Works Fellowship has afforded me the opportunity to return to my home state and give back to the community that raised me.
Caroline Tripp /
2023 Equal Justice Works Fellow
The Project
Dontae’s project at South Carolina Appleseed will focus on coordinating with community partners and impacted individuals to help bring attention to the need to improve eviction laws, access to affordable housing, and housing disparities in South Carolina.
South Carolina has some of the worst outcomes in the country when it comes to housing disputes and landlord-tenant relations, and the state leads the nation in many categories related to eviction filings, eviction rates, and outcomes unfavorable to tenants. Many tenants facing eviction do not have access to legal counsel, and this eviction filing will follow them as a marker in the public index for life regardless of the outcome of their case. This issue effects all tenants, but disproportionately affects those living in low-income housing, immigrant communities, and families with generational poverty.
Dontae was inspired to do this work after working with disadvantaged communities in North Carolina at a local public defender’s office, as well as an immigration law firm. Dontae has seen firsthand how advocacy can impact peoples’ lives on a personal level, and he wants to continue to build a career advocating for people.
Fellowship Plans
Dontae will be working with attorneys in South Carolina to help implement a more effective and expansive housing court. This will include streamlining the intake process to more effectively address client needs before they appear in court, working with pro bono attorneys to help increase access to counsel, and lobbying with South Carolina justices to implement policies that favor tenants & the discretion of their records. Dontae will also be working directly with people in affected communities to increase literacy regarding the eviction process and tenant rights.
Media
How a Criminal Record Can Lead To a Lifetime of Housing Issues in South Carolina
My Equal Justice Works Fellowship has allowed me to serve in a capacity where I can advocate on behalf of people facing housing insecurity and the uphill battle that accompanies it. I do not think that there is more meaningful work I could be doing.
Dontae James /
2023 Equal Justice Works Fellow
The Project
Dan’s project focuses on addressing housing instability in and near Petersburg, Virginia through his representation of low-income individuals as a housing attorney with Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Inc. Petersburg has one of the highest eviction rates among small cities in the U.S. and the surrounding cities and counties Dan serves face much the same problem. Eviction disproportionately affects those experiencing poverty, meaning they are less likely to be able to obtain an attorney. Many of these individuals also experience other conflicts with their landlords that can be addressed through the assistance of an attorney.Fellowship Plans
To help address these problems, Dan will represent eligible individuals in housing-related litigation, including eviction defense and affirmative litigation to address issues like poor housing conditions, lockouts, and other abuses by landlords. Dan will additionally engage in community outreach to engage others who can assist and legal training to train more attorneys who can then lend their services to those individuals in need.
Dan became inspired to do this work during his time assisting Central Virginia Legal Aid Society as a pro bono attorney. He realized he could use his skills and education to make a difference in the lives of people who may not otherwise have been able to receive legal assistance. Housing is a fundamental need that so many unfortunately fear the loss of or lose, and Dan desires to make a difference for as many of these individuals as he can.
Through my Equal Justice Works Fellowship, I will put my legal skills to work assisting low-income individuals in Petersburg, Virginia and the surrounding areas who are experiencing housing instability or other housing issues.
Dan Shupe /
2023 Fellow in the Housing Justice Program