unmapping Housing Justice
Edited for length and clarity
UnMapping Instructors Stephanie Dorenbosch and Karen Harvey met with AmeriCorps VISTA Jayla Washington to discuss their experience teaching their UnMapping course, Tenants Rights and Organizing in Spring 2024, and how they’re changing the course for Winter 2025. Email Stephanie if you’re interested in registering!
Jayla: Please talk to me about how the relationship between the two of you that informed this course - can you give me a little more insight into your dynamic?
Stephanie: Well, Karen and I have known each other for about 7 or 8 years now. We met while we were both members of the Philadelphia Tenants Union, and I went to a worker of mine, who was not a lawyer, and was invited to a community outreach event about the proposed Good Cause Bill, which completely changed the rules around evictions. We've been friends ever since. There is another person that was part of it too, that we're still close friends with and they both, Karen and Jared, were guest speakers in my first version of this class, the more traditional Drexel class. Then, when I heard about the UnMapping Project and the opportunity [to include a] community co-instructor, I didn't even consider anybody else. I was like “Of course I have to ask Karen to do this, and I hope she says yes.”
Karen has been leading with her story. She's been doing leadership work with her personal experience and personal story for a long time in various settings, especially in tenants rights activism. I know that she's used to presenting it in various ways to various audiences. I thought it would be interesting to experiment to see what happens if we do it in an educational setting. Doing lobbying -- when it's not technically lobbying -- is technically educating constituents or politicians correctly, and I knew she had a ton of experience doing that. I thought it would translate really well to the nontraditional classroom. And I was so excited she was able to do it.
Jayla: That's so good! In response to that question, Karen, I’m interested to see how the work that you’ve done in the community translates into a Drexel classroom. How do you make these real-life things relevant to students who are here to get their credits and accumulate things for their success? How do you make this relevant to them and their daily lives?
Karen: I should start off by saying that, as Stephanie said, I've been telling my story for a long time, and when I stop and think about how many years it's been, it just disturbs me that my story is not so different from what people are experiencing today. So when I looked at it in that way, it made me feel like that there was something for students to gain from it. If nothing else, it could put them in touch with real people, real stories, real feelings, and how the laws -- or the lack of appropriate laws in the city -- really affects everyday folks that they pass on the street or see on the bus or even those at a fair, a rally, or anywhere. It became important for me to help people that have a clear picture about what and more so who is affected in this way. I was homeless for a while, and if you look at what folks think of a homeless person, I don't fit the bill. I have a college degree, I worked for 35 years professionally. For people to see that, yes, an everyday average working woman can run into a situation that was out of my control, and see how things could be better.
I've found in talking to students and people who I talk with about my work, they don't believe that there aren't laws to protect tenants. Tenants actually do need someone to help them to identify what their rights are and help them having court representation at an eviction. It's not automatic. It is more so now with the right to counsel piece in place. But in my case, I went to eviction court more than once without an attorney, and only one of those outcomes was good. And that was primarily because the landlord was such a liar, he just kept stepping in his own stuff.
Left to right: Stephanie Dorenbosch, Karen Harvey, Andrew Lee, and Cheri Honkala.
On December 4th these experts and organizers shared how their personal experiences inform and guide their organizing for housing as a human right.
Jayla: Well, when push comes to shove, at least now you have this personal, lived experience that adds to what this learning experience could be for the students. I think that the personal piece of “this could have been anybody” adds to that personalization of the lesson. Thank you for that tie-in.
Stephanie: Jayla, I want to add to that. Last time we did this [course], we had a lot of students enrolled who also had experiences, like difficult landlords, poor living conditions, evictions, and stuff. For students who hadn’t, it makes it a lot less theoretical. And then, having things like Karen’s story, she teaches it as “This is my stuff and I'm going to try to change it,” instead of just being like, “Well, that's how the law is.”
Jayla: I love how you frame that. We've seen these experiences and people have lived them and folks in this room have experience with this. It's less theoretical. It's like it applies to all this and could apply to all of them. It's very well said. With that, Karen, how do you get the courage to tell your story to students? And Stephanie, how do you get the courage or the gravitas to bring that into a Drexel classroom?
Stephanie: That’s not usually a word people use about me.
*Laughs*
Karen: In terms of courage to tell the story, I think that the first time I actually told my story was in a City Council meeting when we were working towards getting the Good Cause Bill passed and that was the hardest or the most difficult time for me. I was saved by the fact that everyone who testified sat at a table had their notes in front of them. It meant that I didn't have to establish a lot of eye contact. But, I certainly got coached before that on the fact that it was important. And yeah, there was some embarrassment for me, and there has continued to be some. That shouldn't be my story, because I did live the way that I was supposed to. I did the things that I was supposed to do, so I have to remind myself that, as I said before, my story is not so dissimilar to other folks. We may not have the same beginning, but the outcome was the same. It's important people to know that. But yeah, it's still difficult to tell, and also I'm tired of hearing it! I hear it in my head, “Oh my God, you're doing the same crap thing.”
Stephanie: She says that every time she talks.
Karen Harvey sharing her story of becoming homeless after a medical emergency, despite a decades long career as a social worker.
Karen: Yeah, but in this case, it's really important for me to say that I trust Stephanie. I have trusted her for as long as we've known each other, and if she said that it would be helpful for people, I have to go along with it.
Stephanie: It’s a lot of responsibility. I'm asking you to be really vulnerable, and this next time, even more vulnerable than last. Right? Centering your story even more in class. I think like what Karen was talking about the those like feelings about saying, in public, “Here is a bad thing that happened to me.” It’s one thing I saw a lot when I was representing tenants. And working with tenants in various capacities was my full-time job before I came to Drexel. Some people are just angry at their landlords, “The system sucks. My landlord’s jerk and is taking advantage of the system.” But so many people, especially if they have kids or if they have families that are responsible for -- even if they have done everything right -- feel a tremendous amount of shame and guilt about facing eviction because there’s always a feeling like you could have done something differently. Sometimes you do mess up a little, but our system does not allow lower income folks to mess up at all. We don't have the kind of safety net that allows you to make errors.
What I thought happened with Karen last year and what I hope continues to happen is using her story in a new context for a new purpose. It gives the class new life, and I think it gives Karen more confidence about the utility and the worth of continuing to tell it, even if she is boring herself at this point. She's not boring her audience, that’s for sure. I think one of the common takeaways between community students and Drexel students, I hope, is the same thing that I try to do when I do the Know Your Rights Workshops and when I work individually with clients and educate them about the system: this is one of the roles that lawyers play. Sort of pulling back the curtains and showing the gears in the system. This pattern I've seen over and over again is people know they're getting screwed. They know the system is unjust, and they don't necessarily know exactly where those gears are turning to make it unjust. It's hard to identify the targets for change.
Lawyers can use all access to the inner workings with systems, like our knowledge and access to people and power, to tailor the educational content. I think that’s way more helpful and often less condescending than just “you have rights.” In those cases, people are like “I know I have rights, but like I got screwed anyway. Now what am I supposed to do? I have rights on paper, now what?” So, to me, I think one of the goals of the course is to pinpoint where things go wrong. And Karen’s insight is super helpful in that.
Jayla: For sure, I can agree. I think the perspectives you both offer are super complementary to each other when facilitating a course like this. I know this can get stressful and consuming, and while hearing each of you talk, I know this is personal to both of you. So where do you find your joy in the midst of doing this work?
Karen: Joy, hmmm?
Stephanie: Are you asking if we've managed to avoid burnout? Because the answer is absolutely not!
*Laughs*
It's very easy when you're talking about the laws and how they suck [for it] to sort of be a huge bummer in class, right? This whole system causes so many traumatic problems for so many people. One of the things that I think we improved from the first year into the second year was adjusting that structure where it’s “here's the laws and here’s how to change it,” and tweaking that this past year to incorporate more, “here's what people are doing about it” in every class session instead of holding off to the end. As cynical or disappointed as we have both been to see things play out, we don't want to leave the students thinking that there's no hope, we want to encourage them to get involved and push for change that will help them in their communities. Feeding them information about how like how resistance is happening and how people are pushing for change through Karen’s story and in the class readings and some of the experiential learning assignments that we came up with. If I can't feel the joy myself, at least I'm going to fake it and put it in front of the students and give them opportunities to find it.
Karen: Truthfully, I find joy in small doses. Anytime I'm able to help someone out and get a positive outcome -- with positive being a relative term because you know I never really get everything I think a person deserves -- but if I can help someone in a small way that might lead to something bigger, or take 3 barriers out of their way, and give them a boost to get started, there's joy in that to me. I also have a very sick sense of humor so can always find something funny in almost everything. It's sickening sometimes! Inappropriate too at times, but that's just who I am! And when students have their “lightbulb” moments, there’s a piece of positive encouragement in that to me.