BOARD CANDIDATE BIOGRAPHIES

Candidates Include: Bambie Hayes Brown, Karimah Dillard, Yasin Efundele, Rhonda Robinson, and Amy Mei Willis

Bambie Hayes Brown: I, Bambie Hayes-Brown, am a personal member of the Housing Justice League in good standing. I bring a specialized outlook to housing justice and the housing affordability space due to my varied professional and person background. I am a two-time former resident of public housing. Additionally, was homeless in 2013 while I was pregnant with my youngest son (after his father was deported) with my two older children. Currently, I reside in an extended stay hotel due to housing affordability challenges.

Professionally, I am the President and CEO of Georgia Advancing Communities Together, Inc., a statewide membership organization which represents Georgia’s nonprofit housing and community development organizations. I previously served as Executive Director for Crisp Area Habitat for Humanity, Inc. and as the Homeownership and Special Programs Manager for the Housing Authority of DeKalb County.  I have 23 years of experience in rural and urban housing, community and economic development including the Housing Choice Voucher Program, Public Housing, HUD-VASH, Natural Disaster Response, LIHTC, CDBG, HOME Investment Partnership, Tax-Exempt Bonds, and public/private deal structuring. I am a graduate of Shorter University with both a Bachelor’s in Business Management and an MBA, and a graduate of the Class of 2018 Atlanta Regional Commission’s Regional Leadership Institute. Also, I am a licensed Georgia Real Estate Broker, Certified Economic Development Finance Professional, and PhD Candidate.

I desire to serve on the Board of Directors of the Housing Justice League to influence meaningful policy that positively affects the lowest of incomes, disabled, children, black and brown people, and marginalized people. Too often, grassroots organizations and people who are most adversely affected by housing affordability are not at the decision-making table. I want to change that narrative where we make the table, set it, and eat from it. I desire to find resources for the Housing Justice League to continue and expand its work. I desire to be one of the voices that hold the City of Atlanta, State of Georgia, and nation accountable for ensuring that ALL people have a decent, safe, and affordable place to live. I desire to mobilize, educate, and empower people who look like me and who are or have been in my housing situations to take a stand against unscrupulous developers, landlords, property owners, and municipal leaders who fail on their promises to have ‘real’ housing affordability for marginalized people.

Therefore, it is my desire to be nominated for the Board of Directors for the Housing Justice League.

Karimah Dillard: My name is Karimah Dillard, and I am a resident of Atlanta- born and raised in South West Atlanta, and a member of the Housing Justice League.  I have lived here most of my life, and during that time I have usually been involved in the politics of my community – whether it was attending NPU meetings under the leadership of the late Barney Simms, registering people to vote or talking to my neighbors about who did what when.  I patronize our businesses, am familiar with the organizations, and see the potential for my city to truly become that shining city on a hill- that Beloved Community- the city for which we can and should feel enormous pride. 

As a college student and President of the Black Student Union on a predominantly white college campus in the 90’s, I organized a series of political education events and boycotts after the black students were the targets of hate speech on campus by a campus newspaper columnist.  After graduating, I returned home to Atlanta only to find the City was trying to turn our street into a dead end. I, along with my mother and other community and business residents, spoke out against this and we won. To this day, our street remains. After returning to Atlanta for several years, I left and became an artist in residence in Minneapolis and then after 9/11, decided to return to New York to study at New York University.  I returned once again to Georgia after graduating and have not left. 

In 2016, I found myself politically activated once again while a Social Work Student at GA State University.  While working out at my local YMCA, In was watching the news and saw one of my GA State comrades (Asma Hoon) being removed from a student government meeting just for asking the President of the University why he would not sign a Community Benefits Agreement.  Prior to that moment I knew nothing about the fight in the affected communities of Turner Field. I started asking around and then found myself at a community meeting. Right after the meeting I found myself caught up in a direct action and felt like I had truly come back home for the first time.  I am the product of parents who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and Peanut Brigade. I am a Movement Baby. It is in my blood. I started attending USAS (United Students Against Sweatshops) meetings on GSU’s campus regularly, and once Tent City was erected, I was there several times a week – sleeping in tents, weathering the heat, the cold and the rain, talking to folks about the CBA and passing out flyers.  I organized my classmates and colleagues to support the cause with either their time, talent or tithe and was one of several students chosen by the community to negotiate with GSU administration. During this time I was also a part of the Atlanta delegation that went to Tennessee with Right to The City/Homes 4 All to help organize residents there and have attended several Homes 4 All Assemblies; and while a social work student I also did some local work with ACORN International looking for folks who had predatory rent to own contracts and after graduating, helped one resident remain in his home by advocating on his behalf with attorneys and raising almost $2,000 so he did not lose his home to predatory practices by an exploitative landlord.

Sadly, I was there the day Tent City was raided and felt traumatized -  like I was watching my home be demolished. Watching the GSU police tear down our tents, toss our things like yesterday’s garbage and threaten us all with arrest, filled me with rage and a hunger to make sure I devoted myself to making sure folks who want to remain in their communities get to remain. I was homeless as a child for a while  with my mom and little brother after watching our home burn to the ground during a house fire. I know what it is like to not have a place that is your own, or know where you are going to lay your head at night, and I firmly believe housing is a human right and that everybody deserves a decent, affordable place to call home.

I have become quite outspoken in my support for Justice over the last 3 years whether it was speaking out at City Hall against the gentrification and displacement happening around Turner Field or in support of Ending Money Bail on behalf of SONG and ZAMI NOBLA – two organizations with which I am also affiliated.  I have led rallies for Housing Justice League against gentrification and displacement, led organizing strategy sessions with HJL members after the Beltline Report was released, talked to the media on behalf of HJL several times, and have raised over $800 to support Housing Justice League’s mission to fight and preserve affordable housing, just living conditions, prevent gentrification and build community power for an Atlanta-wide housing justice movement. I am currently part of HJL’s Eviction Defense Team, and am helping to spread the word about the eviction defense manual and the eviction defense work – whether that be speaking at a University or community meeting.  I am both a Social Worker and a Drama Therapist and when I am not organizing around housing justice issues I am writing grants, facilitating workshops and supporting domestic violence survivors in maintaining safety and stability in their lives through advocacy and case management.

I love the Housing Justice League and the people in it.  I believe that we have the power to persuade decision makers to be on the right side of history and become a city that does right by its neighbors, that has sustainable communities and a home for everyone who wants one.

Yasin Efundele: Yasin is a single senior 70+ woman of color living in HUD Senior Housing for about 8 years after being turned down for buying a home after selling her home of 25 years. 

Hold a B.S. in Education from Central State, Wilberforce, OH. Educator, Administrative Assistant, Counselor and Advisor, Craftsman, ets. 

Yasin joined HJL after moving from one slumlord to another. That was when I became in the community attmpting to learn the rights a person had in Atlanta. 

Before moving to Atlanta, I was raised in Long Island, New York in a family who designed built and rented housing and housing development for both moderate and low income yousing in the 60s. Assisted in the building of the African Village in South Carolina where I taught school to the young girls to develop into mothers an wives, worked with Crime Watch in Miami.

Organized and developed Provident Manor Tenant Association, member of Turner Field Benefit Coalition, 9 to 5 Working Women, Counselor and Religious Leader, working on Fellowship with Annie E. Casie Foundation as a Residential Community Leader on Racial Equity. 

My interest is in the community because if I continue to sit back and do nothing then the rest of my years would continue to be walked over the same as we are letting our government walk over many of us. 

Rhonda Robinson: I want to be on the Board for Housing Justice League because I believe HJL is making a difference and I want to be a part of this movement. I want to be able to help others and show them that they don’t have to be afraid to stand for what they believe in when it comes to their housing.

For the last three years I have volunteered at Intown Collaborative Ministries in their Food Pantry on Saturdays. I enjoy giving back and helping others or just putting a smile on someone’s face.  I helped to get the Briarcliff Summit Tenant Association started and I am continuing in the effort to increase our membership by door knocking, facilitating meetings and passing out fliers. I am currently helping to organize a Thanksgiving Celebration for Briarcliff Summit Tenants by Briarcliff Summit Tenants.

I am just really excited to get to work and start making some changes: Atlanta’s City Wide Tenant Association.  If given the chance I will work hard to further the work and mission of HJL. There is much work to do and not a lot of time to do it.

Amy Mei Willis: My name is Amy Mei Willis. I have spent the past seven years as an organizer, law student, and attorney working to alleviate oppressive systems of injustice. Officially serving on the HJL board combines my passion for using law as a tool for social change, and my commitment to organizing in the South.

I began my legal work in 2013 at Greater Boston Legal Services, where I worked on an anti-foreclosure task force of legal aid attorneys and community organizers crhalled Project No One Leaves (PNOL). This work involved managing and leading volunteers to canvass foreclosed properties in greater Boston. We worked to reach families in low-income neighborhoods highly impacted by the housing crisis, informing them of their legal rights and connecting them with grassroots, housing justice organizations such as City Life / Vida Urbana. In 2014, I continued my legal work at the Foreclosure Task Force at Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. And, in the spring of 2015, I researched mortgage and consumer credit regulation as a Consumer Law Public Service Fellow at the National Consumer Law Center.  

Following law school, I served as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Georgia Law Center for the Homeless from 2015-2017. My fellowship project centered on providing legal support to low-income tenants facing evictions caused by the lack of systematic support. I designed a free Eviction Defense Clinic serving these families, and helped start the Housing Justice League (HJL). As a member of HJL, I have provided legal assistance for members of the HJL community. I look forward to serving HJL as a board member.