Tenant Right to Counsel Convening

Alexander Kolokotronis is Director of the Naugatuck Valley Project (NVP). NVP has 23 member organizations, including churches, a mosque, labor unions, and housing cooperatives. Alex is also Director of NVP's community land trust arm, through which he stewards and supports six limited equity housing cooperatives in Waterbury, which are among the most affordable apartments in the state of Connecticut. Prior to NVP, Alex worked at the Connecticut AFL-CIO, supporting union affiliates representing 250,000 labor union members and co-running a statewide election program that successfully swept labor union members into the state legislature. Alex has organized tenants since 2019; was one of the member-leaders of the Emerson Tenants Union in New Haven; organized another tenants union to reach collective bargaining with their landlord in New Haven; and he was a co-leader of the Connecticut Right to Counsel Coalition in 2021, resulting in Connecticut becoming the second state in the country with right to counsel for tenants during eviction proceedings. Prior to arriving in Connecticut, Alex was involved in worker cooperative development and advocacy in New York City, and in creating participatory budgeting processes at the neighborhood, K-12 and university level both in NYC and in Greater New Haven. He completed his PhD at Yale University in political science, with a focus on unions and cooperatives.