East Boston Spatial Justice Lab Launches Neighborhood Eviction Defense Project

07.22.26 — Nearly half of Boston renters are cost-burdened, eviction filings are increasing, rents are increasing and low-income and immigrant communities face disproportionate risk of housing instability, displacement and homelessness. At the same time, existing legal services remain insufficient in scale and often disconnected from the cultural realities of the communities they aim to serve. To tackle this housing crisis, the East Boston Spatial Justice Lab (EBSJL) at Northeastern Law’s NuLawLab is launching the Neighborhood Eviction Defense (NED) Project. NED is focused on developing a future training program that will leverage arts, culture and legal empowerment to help residents fight displacement and stay in their homes.

“This initiative reflects a broader shift in how we think about legal systems—not just as services delivered to communities, but as infrastructures that can be co-created with them,” said Dan Jackson ’97, executive director of NuLawLab and member of the EBSJL collaborative.

“Our goal is to move beyond access to legal services toward building community capacity and agency,” added Jules Rochielle Sievert, creative director of NuLawLab and member of the EBSJL collaborative.

NuLawLab is Northeastern University School of Law’s interdisciplinary innovation laboratory, combining law, art and design to create new approaches to accessing justice. The EBSJL brings together community members, researchers and practitioners to address housing instability, displacement and spatial inequality through participatory research and design.

Studies show that people facing eviction are more likely to seek support from trusted community networks than from formal legal institutions. Building on Northeastern Law’s public interest mission and NuLawLab’s integrated model of legal advocacy, community building, arts and culture, mentorship and research, the NED project will develop a cohesive, community-centered framework for legal empowerment. It centers a distinctive approach: using arts, cultural organizing and popular education tools to convey legal knowledge and mobilize collective action. Through participatory workshops, co-designed curriculum and community-led implementation, the program will eventually deliver culturally relevant eviction defense training, support community-based housing specialists and organizers, strengthen mutual aid and neighborhood-based legal support systems, and develop participatory evaluation models measuring both housing outcomes and community wellbeing.

“Displacement takes more than our homes; it takes our neighbors, our artists, our memory. As the daughter of immigrants, I know eviction and deportation are part of the same story: who

gets to belong, and who gets treated as disposable. Rooting legal empowerment in arts and culture affirms that our lives and presence are worth fighting for, and that anyone can fight,” said Gabriela Cartagena, a local artist and organizer who will co-lead the project’s workshops.

“We need systems that are clear, supportive and trustworthy for our community while navigating the eviction process. Our work centers community building, education and resource sharing, and artistic expression as tools to help combat housing injustices while helping families and individuals feel more secure and less alone through daunting processes,” said William Wallace Patten, a local artist and organizer who is joining Cartagena in leading the workshops.

The project is led by a transdisciplinary team of neighborhood organizers, national experts and academic researchers collaborating with community partners in East Boston. The team is excited to launch this grant in collaboration with StarLuna Consulting LLC, a social equity research, policy and community engagement consulting firm focused on advancing anti-racism, environmental justice and community-centered policy and planning in Boston. “This project strengthens our existing community centered efforts by providing us with the tools for neighbors to support and protect each other,” said Dr. Neenah Estrella-Luna, principal at StarLuna Consulting.

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