Dear reader,
Thank you for reading Issue 2 of Volume 33 of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. As the nation’s first law journal focused on advancing scholarship that grapples with and presents solutions to poverty-related issues, we are eager to share these six timely, thought-provoking pieces with you.

In Issue 2, you will first find Marilyn Hajj’s (award-winning!) analysis of a policy that has recently gained a lot of traction: eliminating taxes on tips. Hajj painstakingly charts the real-world impacts of recent tip taxation policy proposals and critiques superficial fixes that undermine workers’ access to social safety net programs. Next, Professor Myron Orfield argues against concentrating subsidized housing in Minneapolis’s racially segregated Phillips neighborhood and shows how real estate developers deploy progressive language to profit off funding for affordable housing with no return on investment for the low-income, mostly Black individuals and families who live there. In our third Article, Ali Zane draws on his experience with Philadelphia’s tenant movement to explain how lawyers can mean-ingfully support tenant organizing and contribute to collective efforts to upend the status quo in landlord-tenant law. Our final Article, by Professor Alexa Rosenbloom, exposes how debt collection law firms rely on loosely supervised “coverage attorneys” to handle court appearances at scale, a practice that routinely harms low- income, self-represented debtors and leads to serious ethical violations. In tandem with Professor Rosenbloom’s Article, we are grateful to share a Community Voices piece co-authored by Kristen Bor-Zale, a consumer rights practitioner, and Sarah, a former client whose story illuminates the significant consequences the coverage attorney system has on the lives of low-income consumers. Finally, Issue 2 concludes with a Note by Christina Chang exploring how Minnesota’s laws classifying prenatal substance use as child abuse embed fetal personhood logic, exacerbate already-stark racial and health disparities, and are unconstitutional under the state’s own reproductive rights protections.

We hope each piece sparks important conversations within the field of poverty law and policy and strengthens collective fights against economic injustice in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

We are so grateful to our authors for trusting us with their work. Thank you to our staff, senior editors, and pod leaders who meticulously edited every word of this issue. Finally, thank you to our readers, whose work brings to life the ideas articulated within these pages.

Sincerely,
Sarah Minion, Editor-in-Chief, Vol. 33
Erika Anclade, General Managing Editor, Vol. 33
Yaseen Hashmi, Articles Managing Editor, Vol. 33
Shawn Ali, Notes Managing Editor, Vol. 33
Julia Tecotzky, Community Voices Managing Editor, Vol. 33
Rebecca Wilson, Online Managing Editor, Vol. 33