The Housing Deputy Director is the oil that keeps the our mighty housing justice machine running. By supporting the administration of the team, including our clinical program and Tenant’s Rights Workshop, the tenant rental assistance program, and housing policy work, Carmen helps hold the work that collectively chips away at the housing crisis in the Bay Area and across California. Additionally, the Deputy Director supervises and supports the intake team, the heartbeat of our work, which fights on the front lines every day, speaking with hundred of tenants seeking to defend their housing rights.

Carmen joined EBCLC in Aug 2019 as Housing Intake and Program Coordinator and they transitioned to Deputy Director of Housing in 2021. Prior to joining EBCLC, they worked as a San Francisco based Tenant Rights Organizer and Counselor with Causa Justa Just Cause.

Carmen is a mixed race Salvadoran/Chinese, queer, trans nonbinary and ever evolving artist and organizer born in Kuskatan, raised in occupied Tovaangar, and currently living, learning, and growing in Huichin, occupied and unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory. As an immigrant, child of a single parent, and youngest child of 3, their personal lived experience is a driving factor behind their commitment to housing justice, having been forcefully displaced multiple times throughout their childhood. When Carmen isn’t working as a housing advocate doing eviction defense and tenant rights advocacy within the “FTE” cisheteropatriachal system, you can find them drumming with different groups across the Bay, manifesting, visioning, and organizing for a liberated future, or simply munching on some good local food with their friends.