Welcome to The Social Impact Podcast, brought to you by the Loeb Center at Amherst College and hosted by Ella Simons ’26!
In each episode, I sit down with a student or alum to explore their personal career journeys, the choices that have shaped them, and the insights they’ve gained along the way. Whether you’re curious about purposeful work or looking for inspiration in your own path, tune in for fresh perspectives and meaningful conversations. Stay tuned for new episodes dropping soon!
The transcription below has been edited for clarity.
Ella:
Welcome to the very first episode of the Social Impact podcast from the Loeb Center. We’re kicking things off with a conversation featuring Jenna Collins, who’s making waves in the world of legal services and affordable housing. We had a chat about her journey and the impact of her work. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Jenna:
Hi.
Ella:
Hi. So can you tell me your name and what you do?
Jenna:
Sure. I’m Jenna Collins. I am a housing attorney and the director of supervision and professional development at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia.
Ella:
Wow, cool. Could you maybe explain what it is that you do?
Jenna:
Sure. So I will talk about both roles. So [in] my role as a housing attorney, I do direct representation of low-income Philadelphians in housing-related cases. So that’s evictions, habitability issues: the roof is leaking or the heat’s not working, [and] tenants who are in public housing or other subsidized housing who are going to lose the financial assistance that they’re getting for housing. I represent those tenants as well. I also do policy advocacy around housing. My policy advocacy focuses are:
– The intersection of housing and domestic violence.
– Housing and racial justice.
– The preservation of affordable housing.
So that’s the housing attorney hat. And then as director of supervision and professional development, I am in charge of overseeing and developing systems for our entire organization.
So that’s all 200 staff, every job category around supervision, training, and professional development. I want to make sure my staff is happy and well-trained.
Ella:
Wow. That sounds like a lot to juggle.
Jenna:
It can be.
Ella:
So can you walk us through what an average day for you would look like?
Jenna:
Sure. So I can talk about a day when I have court and a day without court. So a day with court: there’s two sessions for housing court. There’s morning or afternoon sessions. So I will usually, if I’m in court, represent more than one client in court. Let’s say it’s a morning court session. I will go to court. They basically do a cattle call in Philadelphia housing court, where they call all of the cases for the day and then they send everybody into another room to see if they can negotiate it. If you can’t, you go to trial that day. So [in] most of my cases, we’re able to negotiate settlements. Sometimes we don’t and then we’ll end up going to trial. We usually get a decision that day. I will say that like 95% of my cases are settled or we win. I have lost some cases. Those are heartbreakers always.
There’s a lot of standing around and waiting in court. So I’ll probably be in court for a couple hours. Then from court, I will get back and I may check in with the staff that I supervise to see how their morning’s been going. And that might be in-person if we all happen to be in the office at the same time, but we’re partly remote. So it might also be over Teams or Slack or an email or a text, to see what they have on tap for the day.
Then I usually have a lot of meetings. And so those are meetings to, for example, provide support to a supervisor who’s struggling with a supervisee or a supervisee who’s struggling with a supervisor, to provide other managers at the organization support for their teams when they want to figure out a training question or a staff engagement question. I may meet with those managers. I may have a group meeting. I will usually have some meetings around the housing policy work that we do, depending on the day, depending on the policy work. I’m always available for any staff members to ask housing case questions to.
And sometimes people will drop by my office in person. Sometimes it’ll be an email or a call. We have clients who walk in for intake and I’ll kind of be back up to help manage issues that come up on intake that might need a manager to step in. So if somebody is particularly upset, or if
there’s a really difficult case. Something that happens a lot is someone will come in and they’ll bring their friend, and we’re not allowed to bring a friend back for an interview because that messes up attorney-client privilege. And usually we’ll need someone higher up to step in and gently get the friend to wait in the waiting room.
And then I will spend some time on my own, either working on policy advocacy stuff, working on casework, or kind of refining systems for the organization around supervision and training, developing new trainings, updating our supervision policies, that kind of thing.
Ella:
Wow. What a day!
Jenna:
It’s a full day.
Ella:
So you mentioned that you usually win your cases, which is amazing. Is there any specific case that you can remember that particularly touched you in either a good way or something that was super difficult?
Jenna:
Yeah, I mean, so my policy work, some of it is at the intersection of housing and domestic violence. And I think those are always the most impactful and also most heartbreaking cases. So I can think of a good example of a housing case like that. We have a client who is being evicted from her housing. It’s probably a single mom, probably it’s subsidized housing. So the government is helping her pay her rent. She’s particularly low income. She has a boyfriend or partner, ex or current, who was abusive, is abusive. She’s called the police to the property. The abuser has done damage to the property. So she’s being evicted for nuisance laws, which say that if you call the police to your home, you can get evicted for a nuisance law because having the police is a bother to your neighbors, and to damage to the property, which she’s not responsible for. And we’re basically disincentivizing women to call for emergency services when they are experiencing violence in their home.
The good news is that there are some laws that are supposed to protect against evictions based on those grounds. But most people don’t know that those laws exist. So that’s where I come in. So I will get to court. I try to make the case to a landlord and sometimes they are sympathetic and sometimes they’re not. If they’re not, then we get in front of the judge and I get to present the law. Sometimes the judge doesn’t even know the law exists. And keep my client and probably her kids, because again, it’s mostly single moms, in housing that they desperately need because it is subsidized by the government and they are probably particularly low income, even though probably my client has a job. But when you have kids and you’re making minimum wage, which is the state of Pennsylvania, $7.25 an hour, that is not enough to afford an apartment for you and your kids and all of the other things that you and your children need.
So that is an actual example of a case, but also a typical example of a case that feels really important and meaningful because it’s so individualized and it’s the kind of thing where the protections are there, but people just don’t know. And so I think that’s where you can really benefit from the help of a lawyer or an organization like mine is making sure that people know the protections that are out there for them, including the judges that we appear in front of.
Ella:
Wow. On the flip side of that, do you have any success stories that you are really proud of and want to share?
Jenna:
I can think of policy advocacy successes. It is not just mine personally. It is really a collective effort of everyone that I work with in the housing unit at CLS. In the early 2010s, we really started doing a lot of work to push for a right to counsel in housing cases. Lots of people don’t know. They think you’re guaranteed a lawyer in any case, especially a case as important as one where you’re about to lose your housing. You are not.
So we did a lot of work and a lot of advocacy for a really long time with the Philadelphia City Council. We worked to get funding for studies to show the money that could be saved, to show the disparity in representation between landlords and tenants and how beneficial it can be for a tenant to have a lawyer in the room and how it’s good for the city. It saves the city. It saves the taxpayers money. It decreases pressure on shelter systems, things like that, to have a lawyer in the room.
And we were finally able in 2019 to get right to counsel in all housing cases passed in Philadelphia. It was supposed to start very shortly after in early 2020, but then COVID hit and courts closed. So it really started in earnest at the end of the late fall of 2020, early 2021, and now we are representing clients in housing cases without a merit determination, with funding from the city of Philadelphia to hire enough lawyers. And slowly but surely we’re rolling it out zip code by zip code, starting with the lowest income zip codes in Philadelphia and working our way up.
Ella:
Wow. That’s really cool. Yeah. Are you from Philadelphia?
Jenna:
I am not from Philadelphia. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, but I’ve been in Philly since 2011.
Ella:
Oh, nice. How did you become interested in housing law?
Jenna:
I think I first really became interested in housing law actually when I was graduating Amherst in ‘08, and we had the foreclosure crisis hit, and we started to really see the impact that that kind of extreme loss in housing stability had on communities and individuals in the country. I’m from Cleveland originally, and Cleveland was one of the cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis to the point where now you still see lots of blocks of vacant boarded up housing that was homes that were foreclosed on during the foreclosure crisis back in 2008 to 2012 time period. So, you know, 10, 15 years, even more. So seeing the impact that that had on communities and then the way that it really touches every issue that I’m interested in from, you know, the domestic violence work, the racial justice work to climate justice to barriers to employment to criminal justice outcomes just felt like it was an issue that basically touched everything.
Ella:
Can you talk a little bit more about how current events and the new administration might impact your work?
Jenna:
The new administration is having a huge impact on our work already, and it’s been six weeks. You know, they are planning on decreasing the staffing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development by 50%. And this is the federal government department that basically handles discrimination claims in housing. It also administers all of the, like, subsidized low-income housing programs. Almost everyone in the country in some way funnels through HUD. So that is huge, and we’re not sure what’s going to happen there. It was already understaffed and underfunded. We’ve also already seen the beginning of rollback of civil rights protections. So, you know, on March 4th, the Trump administration instituted a regulation that would roll back an Obama-era rule that was meant to decrease segregation, which seems like it would be not controversial, right? Like, we all agree segregation is bad, right? Well, apparently not. So we’re now dealing with what we do about this rollback in this rule. There’s that piece of us being on the defense with the federal government, but there’s also now a turn towards really counting on local government and state government to pick up the slack and do a lot more advocacy on those levels to get policies in place since we know right now we cannot count on the federal government.
Ella:
Well, it’ll be interesting to see how things develop.
Jenna:
It sure will.
Ella:
Do you ever become demoralized by your work?
Jenna:
I definitely have moments of feeling demoralized by my work. I will say that early in the first Trump administration, I really felt some of those feelings of hopelessness, of “I can’t believe this is happening.” It feels a little bit different now because it’s like, well, we’ve done this once before, so we have some sense of what we need to do going forward. So I think, when we see harmful policy changes, things like the rollback of this rule that was supposed to decrease segregation, that can make you feel pretty hopeless when you’re like, we really haven’t settled that we think segregation is bad.
Ella:
Yeah. In 2025.
Jenna:
Right. And there’s also just sometimes you look at the incredible numbers of clients who need our help and just feel the weight of that system and the weight of poverty and injustice. That can be really, really hard. And so I definitely have those moments. But I, up until this point, have always come out the other side feeling energized and ready to work.
Ella:
Wow. How do you re-energize yourself?
Jenna:
Lots of different ways. Sometimes it’s just taking a break, right? Whether that’s actually taking a break from work, going on vacation, taking a mental health day, that can be a piece of it. It can mean changing the focus of my work a little bit. So maybe, a policy issue feels way too heavy to deal with this week. So I’m going to turn to this one. Or directly representing clients in court this week feels really overwhelming. So I’m going to look at my policy work. Or sometimes you get quick wins directly representing clients in court. And that can be a way to re-energize in the work. So that’s a piece of it too. And also leaning on friends and family and mental health supports, all of that is really, I think, integral to getting re-energized and staying in the work and not burning out.
Ella:
Understood. So, as students about to enter the workforce, I’ve seen news articles that kind of bash Gen Z’s work ethic. And I was wondering if you have any observations about Gen Z or coworkers who have recently graduated.
Jenna:
Yeah, we actually have tons of Gen Z staff right now. We’ve done a lot of hiring recently. And I remember a few years ago when I realized we were starting to hire Gen Z lawyers and I was like, how is Gen Z old enough to be lawyers? But you are. So we actually have tons of Gen Z staff. And I am not compelled by the arguments about the work ethic, like the lack of work ethic or the generalizations about work ethic for Gen Z or for being a millennial, the elder millennial that I am, the millennials before you. I don’t see that. I do see in a really positive way a focus on making work livable, which I think is really important, especially doing work like I do. That to keep from burning out, work needs to feel livable. And you do need to get some joy from your work.
I will also say that I have noticed a much bigger difference in work ethic based on people’s class background, regardless of age. We have lots of older staff who come from really wealthy families who are not as engaged in the work or not as devoted to the work. But people who maybe don’t have that same safety net really value their job. And just because they want their job to not be miserable doesn’t mean they don’t have a work ethic. So I don’t subscribe to that view at all, that Gen Z is lazy or has less of a work ethic.
Ella:
We all appreciate that. So I also wanted to ask, what kinds of skills and assets do you see as becoming most valuable in your workplace, or in the workforce generally today?
Jenna:
Yeah, I mean, obviously, and I think this is true since the 90s, like there’s a continued emphasis on technology and being technologically savvy and understanding the changing technologies. I don’t know what’s going to happen with AI going forward. I am hoping that savviness with AI is not part of it. I have real complicated feelings about AI and what it does for artists and thinkers and also the environmental impact of AI. So I am hopeful that that is actually not a skill that people need to have. But I do think tech continues to be an important skill.
I also think more and more being relationship builders and thoughtful about people is a skill that is becoming more and more important in the workplace. I actually think, really thanks to Gen Z and some extent millennials, [there’s] a focus on workplaces as being people-centered and a little more worker-centered. I think we’re no longer in the age of the socially inept genius and we want smart people who work hard but are thoughtful of the people around them.
Ella:
Wow, yeah. That’s ideal. Now, what advice do you have for students who are entering the workforce now?
Jenna:
I think the advice I have for students who are entering the workforce now, I think I have two pieces of advice that I hope don’t sound too shmoopy:
Stay hopeful and committed. I think this is actually a really hard time to be entering the workforce. I’m really sympathetic to that based on when I was entering the workforce. I also think, and I know this is unusual, that young people entering the workforce get a bad rap that I think is unearned. I actually think the changes that y’all are pushing for are amazing and important.
So I think stay hopeful and stay committed. And I also will just reiterate the piece of think about the people around you, build relationships. The best thing you can do for your careers and probably for yourselves is build relationships.
Ella:
And do you think Amherst has affected this view that you have?
Jenna:
I definitely think it has affected the view that I have in as much as the people that I met at Amherst have stayed with me and have been really important parts of my life. I am still very good friends with all of my college roommates. I lived in suites, so I had lots of roommates. And they have really shown me how valuable having thoughtful, considerate people around you and to support you can be. So I think that’s a huge part of it.
I will also say, for as much as Amherst sometimes gets the rap as being all about esoteric thought, I think some of that is really important to be able to be a big picture thinker, to make connections that are maybe not obvious. I think [that] is a skill that Amherst really does instill in its students. So I think that’s the educational side. And then just the relationships that I’ve taken away from Amherst have been so valuable to me.
Ella:
That’s really nice to hear that you’re still connected with people you met here.
Jenna:
Yeah.
Ella:
So my last question is, how do you unwind after a long day at work?
Jenna:
I don’t because I have two small children. No, that’s not true. So some of it is that I am now a parent, so I hang out with my kids. And that requires a totally different part of my brain in some ways. And so there’s that piece of it. But after the kids go to bed, I am an avid reader. I read mystery novels because they’re very straightforward and a little brainless. And I watch a lot of TV, like an unhealthy amount. I famously have insomnia. So when my whole house is asleep, I’m awake with nothing to do. So I will stream. Anytime someone’s like, “Have you seen that show?” or “You should watch that,” I’ve already seen it. It’s just a good way for me to turn my brain off and disconnect.
So I think between reading and just watching too much television, I exercise. I just had a baby in September. Before that, exercise was huge.
Ella:
Congrats!
Jenna:
Thank you. Now that I’m fully recovered, I’m back on the exercise train. And that quick hit of endorphins is really helpful.
Ella:
Okay. Well, thank you so much for talking to me.
Jenna:
My pleasure.
Ella:
And we all appreciate your encouraging words. So thank you so much for sharing such helpful advice!
Jenna:
My pleasure.
Ella:
That’s a wrap on today’s episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this conversation, stay with us, because there’s plenty more coming your way from the Loeb Center. See you next time.
