Supporting Tenants on Their Journey to Safe, Sanitary, and Affordable Housing

The Housing Justice Program is the only Equal Justice Works Fellowship program that employs both lawyers and organizers. Fellows are hosted at legal aid and grassroots organizations in areas where evictions and housing instability have reached epidemic proportions. While lawyers can provide legal advice and representation to tenants facing involuntary displacement, organizers are imperative connectors and resources to communities.

By DeAnna B. Smith, a 2022 Housing Justice Program Fellow conducting outreach in support of tenants in Virginia

I started with the Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia in June 2021 as a Rent Relief Navigator, assisting thousands of Hampton Roads tenants apply for Virginia’s Rent Relief Program. Now, as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in the Housing Justice Program, I am focusing on conducting direct outreach through community partnerships, building tenant education programs, and supporting tenant-led advocacy groups in low-income public and subsidized housing in Southeast Newport News, South Norfolk (Chesapeake), and Portsmouth Virginia. Working with local community leaders and two attorney Fellows, the project is to connect tenants with the legal assistance, knowledge, and resources they need to address systemic issues plaguing the local housing markets.

The communities of focus are predominantly Black and low-income with a high concentration of public and subsidized housing. The current policy of the local public housing authorities is to reduce the availability of subsidized housing in favor of Housing Choice Vouchers, which increases competition at the bottom tier of the market, or to pursue HUD alternatives for public housing properties such as changing rental assistance types and demolishing or selling properties to private owners. Tenants in these communities are most impacted by increased rents, unsafe housing conditions, high eviction rates, and displacement.

Outreach is crucial, not only to this project but in the larger picture of housing justice, because it means reaching tenants who are marginalized, and most times ignored. People face different barriers trying to access legal assistance and knowledge and outreach is one way to remove some of them.

My role as a Fellow is to go into the communities and set up at local food panties and churches, attend community meetings and local events that center access to community resources. It is action-oriented, community-focused, and requires an openness to learning. I’ve learned a lot sitting outside of the courtroom on the day of court taking applications for legal services, working on a needs assessment with a local tenant’s association, and listening to tenants and other community advocates talk about the common issues they hear or see. It’s a collaborative effort that relies so much on these relationships in order to make a solution possible. Providing resources to make tenants stronger and more confident and connecting them with legal assistance is only one half of the movement. It is what we do with it and how we use it to make real change that determines the success of the work. My goal is to support tenants on their journey in finding and using their power to fight for safe, sanitary, and affordable housing.

Visit here to read more stories about the work of our Housing Justice Program Fellows and how they are advocating for policies and practices that protect the rights of all tenants.

The Housing Justice Program includes Fellows hosted across Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. The Housing Justice Program is made possible thanks to the generosity of The JPB Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Abell Foundation, Maryland Legal Services Corporation, and Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina.