Our Team

Staff

María Guadalupe "Lupe" Arreola, Executive Director

Lupe Arreola has been active in the San Francisco tenant community for 20 years. She is the former Director of Counseling Programs at St Peter's Housing Committee where she worked from 2001 to 2008 counseling and organizing San Francisco tenants. Lupe served on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Community Land Trust, as a member of the Lead Poisoning Citizens' Advisory Committee, and on the Board of Directors of Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action (PILA). She currently serves on the Board of Directors of People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Justice (PODER). She is a proud Xicana from Oxnard CA/ El Amarillo, Jal, Mex/ San Fernando Valley, CA. Outside of work, you can find Lupe reading a good book under the shade or exploring new thrift stores.    

 

Aileen Joy, Development Director 

Aileen Joy (they/he/she) is a born and raised Bay Area tenant. Displaced from their family home in San Francisco as a kid, they’ve committed their career to safe, stable, affordable homes for everyone, free from the threat of displacement. Aileen's background is in operations, communications, and development. They have worked for Tenants Together member orgs and partners in the Bay Area and in Sacramento, including Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, Eviction Defense Collaborative and the Sacramento Housing Alliance. Their educational background and passions include narrative creation for social justice movements, language access, community land trusts, and storytelling; they have a BA and an MA in Comparative Literature/Cultural Studies, from UC Santa Cruz and SF State respectively. AJ first joined the TT community in 2012.

 

Adolfo Echeverry, Operations and HR Director

Adolfo Echeverry graduated with a B.S in Agribusiness at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and has over 25 years of experience in the management field. He moved to the United States in 1999. Since, he has worked exclusively with non-profits. Before joining the Tenants Together’s team, Adolfo worked for almost 9 years as Research Associate/Management Assistant at the San Francisco Welcome Back Center. He joined Tenants Together on September 2014. He spends a lot of time doing photography.

 

Deepa Varma, Program and Campaign Director

Deepa Varma got her start in housing justice as a tenants rights attorney in New York City at the West Side SRO Law Project in 2007. She began representing tenants in San Francisco in 2011 at the Eviction Defense Collaborative. In that role, she co-founded the EDC’s litigation project, which has grown into the San Francisco's hub and training ground for San Francisco’s citywide right to counsel program for tenants facing eviction. Deepa then served as the Executive Director of the San Francisco Tenants Union from 2016 to 2020 where she helped to anchor the tenant voice in candidate and ballot races, and spearheaded campaigns on a range of issues to further tenant rights and fight displacement in the legislature, courts and city departments. You also may have seen her in the streets leading chants, and playing the bass drum with the Brass Liberation Orchestra.

 

Sharrah Thompson, Central Valley Regional Coordinator

Sharrah Thompson was born and raised in the Central Valley of California. She is a proud single mama of a bright young boy, who is the center of her universe. Shar got her start in housing justice through her lived experience as a homeless teenager, a survivor of domestic violence, and learning about and asserting her rights to overcome extreme landlord harassment on many occasions. Since 2020, Shar has been actively organizing, deeply-listening, and building strong relationships with renters across Fresno and the Central Valley, through her work with Faith in the Valley. She has been working with a growing coalition of Central Valley residents to advance the North Star vision Homes Guarantee, which, when fully realized, would ensure safe, accessible and deeply and permanently affordable housing for all CV residents regardless of income, background, or conformity to social and legal norms. Shar is fully committed to working with her neighbors, family, friends and everyone who wants to advance housing justice. She strongly believes housing is a human right, and that our current housing system was built upon racial capitalism and serves as a violent extractive and exploitive mechanism to build wealth for the few and fail the majority. In her spare, time she enjoys feeding ducks at the park, going on road trips, and watching movies with her son!

 

Victoria Zacarias, Community Leadership Director

Growing up Victoria saw firsthand the effects of homelessness, having both family and close friends struggle with it as recently as September 2017 when Hurricane Maria destroyed her grandparents’ home. Graduating with a B.A. in Urban & Regional Studies and Spanish & Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, Victoria has dedicated herself to addressing injustice around race, power and privilege that adds to the displacement of so many communities and inhibits them from securing safe, affordable and stable housing. For the past seven years she has worked in nonprofits supporting vulnerable communities, most recently as the Training Coordinator for a community mental health clinic for the foster youth of Alameda County. As a three year volunteer counselor with Tenants Together she is excited to combine her diverse experiences to support the launching of a Translocal Counseling Network.  Through the network she looks forward to continuing and engaging members in conversations safely, strategically and collectively to help ensure inclusivity of housing and enrich our community’s culture, as well as develop a vested connection to the places we call home.

 

Eduardo Torres, Northern California Regional Coordinator

Eduardo has been organizing in his hometown of Bay Point with ACCE West Pittsburg for Progress for 3 years where the focus has been improving the quality of life in the unincorporated community. Eduardo’s educational background is in Recording Arts and his professional experience includes working in media and performing arts. Eduardo previously worked at Univision Communications for 9 years. He is excited to be organizing for tenants' rights in the East Bay, where low-income tenants and communities of color are facing increasing rising rents and displacement.

 

Shanti Singh, Communications and Legislative Director

Shanti Singh left the tech industry to work full-time in tenants' rights after organizing with renters in private, public and nonprofit housing, alongside housing justice groups in San Francisco. She formerly co-chaired the San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America and works on tenant & land use issues there, in addition to being a city commissioner for clean municipal energy, chair of the SF Housing Stability Oversight Board, and a board member of the San Francisco Community Land Trust. She's worked on several SF Board of Supervisors races, ballot measures, and most recently, as Deputy Data Director for the California and New York campaigns of Bernie Sanders. She has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She's excited to be back for her second stint at Tenants Together to fight for every California tenant's right to a union through digital organizing, local ballot support, & state legislative advocacy.

 

Ryan Bell, Southern California Regional Coordinator

Ryan has been involved in organizing housing justice and other social justice campaigns in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley for the past 19 years. In addition to his work with Tenants Together he is a member organizer with the Pasadena Tenants Union. Ryan was instrumental in organizing the successful Measure H campaign that amended the Pasadena City Charter, adding rent control and just cause protections. Measure H passed with 53.8% of the vote in November 2022 and since May 2023 Ryan has been the Chair of the Pasadena Rental Housing Board. Ryan has also been the Director of Community of Engagement at PATH (People Assisting the Homeless).

 

Relisa Richardson, Hotline Coordinator

Relisa has been servicing the Southern California community for 9 years working for a non-profit organization prior to joining our team. She is passionate about equality and rights for all and brings her experience as well as educational background in organizational leadership to our team.  Relisa believes in strong communication and collaboration and will utilize both of these as the leading way to assist with our mission and values here at Tenants Together.

 
 

Board of Directors

 
Stephen L. Collier, Board President
 
Steve Collier has been a staff attorney at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco since 1987, representing low-income tenants in all aspects of housing law. He specializes in affirmative tenant suits for wrongful eviction and habitability, and Ellis Act eviction defense.
 
 
Gen Fujioka, Director
 
Gen Fujioka is a housing rights policy advocate at Chinatown Community Development Center in San Francisco and provides training and support for CCDC’s tenant rights clinic.  Gen is presently a commissioner on San Francisco’s Housing Stability Fund Oversight Board which is supporting the development of social housing and on the steering committee of the San Francisco Anti Displacement Coalition.  Gen previously was on the policy staff at the  National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development in Washington DC and a legal services attorney at the  Asian Law Caucus and the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County.    
 
 
Larry Gross, Director
 
Larry Gross is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) in Los Angeles. He has been with CES for over 5 decades, since its inception in 1973. CES is a grassroots, multi-racial, multi-ethnic tenants' rights organization serving low and moderate income renters throughout the greater Los Angeles area. CES' impressive track record includes leading campaigns to win rent control in the cities of Los Angeles and West Hollywood, among many other accomplishments. Larry has been selected to serve on many City housing task forces and committees over the years. Larry is currently the President of the Los Angeles Board of Animal Services Commissioners and is also the elected Region 12 Director of the California Democratic Party (CDP).
 
 
René Christian Moya
 
René Christian Moya is an organizer with the Debt Collective and the Los Angeles Tenants Union. He is the former campaign director for a ballot initiative in 2020 to strengthen rent control in California and the former campaign coordinator with the statewide community group ACCE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. He has worked extensively on tenant rights, rent control expansion efforts, Pandemic-era emergency protections and social housing.
 
 
Sharon Bashan 
 
Sharon Bashan is the Chief Program Officer at Inner City Law Center, where she oversees key program areas and helps maintain and support a client-centered legal representation model that is consistent with ICLC’s values, vision and strategic goals. Sharon is an experienced non-profit leader, having amassed nearly 20 years in senior leadership roles within legal aid in California. Sharon started her legal career at Pro Bono Project Silicon Valley, where she dramatically increased the organization’s services in the family law space.  At Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, she served as its long-time Director of Pro Bono & Operations where she developed regional pro bono partnerships and led important inter-constituent policy initiatives in the Los Angeles pro bono community. Most recently, Sharon worked at OneJustice, a statewide support center that builds the capacity of all components of California’s civil legal aid system to meet the legal needs of local communities and to ensure the availability of services statewide. As Program Director, she led a statewide team across Los Angeles and San Francisco offices to meet the changing needs of the 100+ legal services organizations in California.  Sharon has served on several boards and statewide committees, including the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Association of California and Co-Chair of the California Access to Justice Commission’s Pro Bono Coordinating Committee.
 
Tenants Together member organizations regularly provide guidance on state legislation and support state and local efforts for renters' rights.

 

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