At 78, Linda Dennis should be in line for a medal for her 25 years of working with kids. Instead, the Charleston Housing Authority is giving her the boot from her apartment. This shouldn’t be happening.

I met Dennis years ago when she asked me to speak to her fifth and sixth graders at St. Julian Devine, the East Side community center. They weren’t a bit shy, peppering the old white guy with questions and showing off the impressive work they had been doing with A Backpack Journalist, the multi-media journalism program Dennis has nurtured. A good time was had by all.

That was my first and last meeting with Dennis, though I’ve followed her good works from afar. Then she emailed me a week ago with news that the Housing Authority wasn’t renewing her lease at Williams Terrace, the handsome senior complex on Laurens Street, overlooking Gadsdenboro Park.

If she fails to leave, the authority “will move forward with all remedies available under the law,” its June 23 letter said. We’ll evict you.

The reason?

Too much “clutter,” the Housing Authority said in a notice left on Dennis’ front door. “A home with a lot of stuff.”

“I have a lot of books,” Dennis says. “They’re all in book cases.” I didn’t visit the small apartment, but in photos she provided last week, it looked perfectly fine.

Running the Housing Authority is no easy job. With 1,400 public housing units, the authority is in court every Tuesday evicting low-income residents for reasons such as not paying the rent and bad (sometimes unsafe, sometimes illegal) behavior. It’s an unpleasant but necessary part of the business.

Linda Dennis hardly fits the model. She has dedicated much of her life to helping people, many of them kids. And now the grandmother of three finds herself in public housing because helping people just isn’t a very good way to pay the rent in our world.

Dennis estimates she has worked with almost 1,000 kids over the years, starting as a military contractor teaching children how to write letters to their deployed parents. When one child admitted he didn’t know how to write, A Backpack Journalist was born.

In her hometown of Columbia, then Charleston (for the past 12 years) and a half-dozen states before that, Dennis has taught kids the art of storytelling through prose, poetry and rap, documentaries, videos and photography. She kept the mission alive by begging small public and private grants — Rick Hendrick Automotive being among her most generous benefactors. When money got tight, she paid for it out of her own pocket.

She took her kids, many from Sanders-Clyde Elementary, places they had never been: They interviewed mayoral candidates and Hillary Clinton. They had breakfast with Ken Burns, the famed documentary filmmaker. They visited the Port of Charleston and the RiverDogs and learned about race cars.

And they wrote about it or filmed it all. Remarkably, they found a lost trove of photos of the legendary activist Esau Jenkins and others that became an exhibit, “Life on Johns Island During the Civil Rights Era,” at the Charleston County Public Library. Dennis wrote and funded a book, “A Backpack Journalist,” about her kids’ adventures.

And she’s not done yet. Dennis is about to start filming a series of online video field trips for students focused on careers in hospitality, public safety, the military and more. Did I mention she was in court last week as a volunteer guardian ad litem, representing an ailing 95-year-old woman in a nursing home?

This is someone the Charleston Housing Authority wants out?

The Housing Authority notice ending her lease cited “clutter,” but emails and other correspondence make clear that Dennis succeeded in annoying the management since she moved in two years ago, the building’s manager, Rayda DuPree-Scott, in particular.

She complained when the air conditioning went out. She complained when the heating went out. She complained and filed a police report when a neighbor threatened her: “You are vulnerable here,” he told her. She installed a security camera outside her apartment, and refused to take it down as DuPree-Scott instructed. Dennis said the head of the authority, Arthur Milligan, personally approved the camera.

Now the Housing Authority is retaliating against her, she says. “Tenants are afraid to speak loudly as they are afraid they will be retaliated also,” said Dennis, who battled cancer and the COVID epidemic at the same time. She is not afraid.

The authority says it can’t discuss individual tenants. “All decisions are made with careful consideration, allowing time for our tenants to plan accordingly, and are guided by fairness and thoughtfulness throughout the process,” it said in a statement. Both Milligan and DuPree-Scott declined to comment.

Putting this woman out is hardly justice for a life lived in the service of others. She’s made a difference in too many lives and keeps in touch with many of them. They are family, she says.

One of the family is Brianna Tucker, who as a teenager got her first taste of journalism as a Backpacker on a Texas military base. Today she is a national political reporter with The Washington Post.

Tucker, 30, praises Dennis for cultivating confidence and curiosity “that many young military children like myself don’t become aware of until later — that their resilience, communication skills, adaptability and sense of service that come with military families’ lifestyles are also the characteristics of a great journalist.”

“Each cohort in that program, under her stewardship, is undoubtedly part of the next generation of storytellers,” she said.

Art Milligan needs to repair this mistake. It shouldn’t be hard.

Steve Bailey is a regular contributor to The Post and Courier Opinion section. He can be reached at [email protected].