I am excited to be joining Regional Housing Legal Services as a Law Student intern this summer. Over the course of this internship, I look forward to gaining experience working with the legal resources that facilitate responsible housing and economic development across Pennsylvania.
My interest in economic opportunity began in undergrad after I spent a year working on the economic empowerment of local farmers by finding ways to localize New Jersey’s food system. Listening to farmers speak about their relationship to the land, spanning generations, opened my eyes to how land stewardship lies at the heart of community-building and economic justice.
After graduation, I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma to work as a community development specialist. Having grown up in the Philadelphia area, I was unfamiliar with Tulsa’s history. Learning about Tulsa’s complicated past gave me more insight into how land and community go hand-in-hand. Though a century had passed, the community still felt the impacts of lost homes, lost livelihoods, and lost neighbors as a result of the 1921 Race Massacre. Subsequent policy decisions could not fix, and in many cases worsened, the harm. I was fortunate to join a team that was dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers to economic and racial equity. Through my colleagues and mentors, I began learning about the financial resources available to build together, grow together, and work towards the goal of making sure every member of the community has quality housing that they can afford. One of my favorite parts of the work was helping implement the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
During my summer at RHLS, I am excited to gain exposure to the legal strategies that help increase affordability in my home state of Pennsylvania. My internship builds on the work I’ve done so far in my career, but with a new lens: creating the legal documents and structures that get affordable housing projects off the ground. From community land trust ground leases to nonprofit tax forms, I am already learning about a wide variety of legal tools that allow this work to be done. I am looking forward to also conducting policy research that examines how different state laws affect the feasibility of small-scale housing development projects.
I am grateful to RHLS for the opportunity to bridge my past experience with my future career as a public interest lawyer and to spend my 1L summer doing meaningful work.