2025 was a landmark year for tenant organizing. In this webinar, we’ll examine emerging tenant-led movements, tools for holding landlords accountable, and legal strategies to preserve affordability and resist displacement.
Speakers:
René Christian Moya, Tenant Power Organizer, the Debt Collective
René Christian Moya is an organizer with the Debt Collective, a debtors’ union fighting to cancel debts and defend millions of households. He is the former campaign director for the Proposition 21 campaign in 2020 — a ballot initiative in 2020 to strengthen rent control in California — and has worked extensively on tenant rights, local rent control campaigns, Pandemic-era emergency protections, and social housing. René was educated at Dartmouth College and the University of London – School of Oriental & African Studies.
Pablo Estupiñan, Deputy Director of Organizing, SAJE
Pablo Estupiñan is currently the Deputy Director of Organizing at SAJE and is coordinator of both the Keep LA Housed and LA Right to Counsel coalitions. He has led recent efforts to win historic reforms to LA City rent control, passed two Right to Counsel ordinances in the City and County of Los Angeles, and secured funding for RTC's expansion.
He was previously Interim Coalition Coordinator for the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition and Director of CASA (Community Action for Safe Apartments) in the Bronx, fighting displacement and gentrification through tenant organizing for over eight years. Pablo led a team of organizers and community leaders who participated in city and state campaigns that won the historic Right to Counsel, multiple rent freezes for NYC rent-stabilized tenants, helped pass HSPTA, and led the campaign to implement and enforce the rent laws.
Born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, Pablo is a first-generation immigrant who grew up undocumented and experienced housing insecurity first hand.
Josie Wells, organizer, Union of Pinnacle Tenants
Josie Wells is a Flatbush, Brooklyn-native and tenant organizer with the Union of Pinnacle Tenants (UPT). She began organizing in July 2025 after the building where she grew up was named in Pinnacle Group’s bankruptcy filing last spring, along with 92 other rent-stabilized properties. Josie is a UPT coordinator passionate about fighting displacement, erasure and forced evictions of Black and Brown New Yorkers.
Moderator: Aysha Khan, Next City, Managing Editor
Aysha Khan is Next City's managing editor. Her reporting has appeared nationally in outlets including the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and Religion News Service. She has been awarded fellowships with the Solutions Journalism Network, the International Center for Journalists, the GroundTruth Project, the Journalism & Women Symposium, the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and more. Aysha holds degrees from Harvard Divinity School and the University of Maryland.
Learn more at: https://nextcity.org/events/detail/solutionsfest-tenants-rising-organizing-for-housing-justice