Martina Tiku

The Project

Through this Fellowship, Martina provided tenants and individuals facing housing instability with vital legal assistance and advocacy.

Martina advocated on behalf of Atlanta’s tenants to improve housing stability through grassroots advocacy, client-driven affirmative litigation, and tenant education to redress housing related legal issues and their underlying causes.

With one of the highest eviction rates in the country, Atlanta’s eviction crisis was disproportionately harmful for Black community members in the years following the pandemic. The costs of housing instability played out in all aspects of these tenants’ lives, from healthcare to education to voting rights. However, these housing issues are often only framed as a family’s inability to pay rent, rather than a result of unmet legal needs and predatory landlord practices. In addition, many tenants are unaware of their rights.

Fellowship Highlights

During the two-year Fellowship, Martina:

• Partnered with Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation to conduct weekly eviction outreach calls, providing critical legal information to hundreds of tenants facing imminent eviction
• Established the NAACP’s first ever Housing Navigator Program, providing over 200 tenants facing eviction with individualized, holistic housing assistance
• Delivered more than 10 presentations and trainings to NAACP members, coalition partners, and at-risk tenants on landlord/tenant law, eviction defense and housing resources, reaching nearly 500 community members experiencing housing instability
• Partnered with over 20 different community organizations and advocacy groups to support housing coalition efforts in Atlanta and across South Carolina

Next Steps

Martina will remain at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where she will continue to work with coalition partners to increase tenant access to resources. She will also work with the NAACP to launch more targeted Fair Housing litigation and continue to expand the NAACP’s Housing Navigator program.

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