About Us
Housing Justice Collective is a team of five dynamic organizers, facilitators, and policy experts who hold a shared vision for housing justice rooted in equity.
We believe to achieve housing justice, we must push past the boundaries of current systems and center the expertise of those who have experienced systemic oppression.
We support communities in designing and implementing self-sustaining efforts by offering facilitation, coaching, implementation, strategy, and policy and resource design.
We apply what we learn at the local level to help transform policy at the state and national levels.
We believe to achieve housing justice, we must push past the boundaries of current systems and center the expertise of those who have experienced systemic oppression.
We support communities in designing and implementing self-sustaining efforts by offering facilitation, coaching, implementation, strategy, and policy and resource design.
We apply what we learn at the local level to help transform policy at the state and national levels.
Working with the Housing Justice Collective is unique because it is one of the few spaces where lived experience leadership is not symbolic—it is structurally embedded.
Working with the Housing Justice Collective is unique because it is one of the few spaces where lived experience leadership is not symbolic—it is structurally embedded.
Rachael Parker
Reimagine Omaha
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The Housing Justice Collective was formed in 2021 out of a desire to move beyond the confines of traditional technical assistance work. We recognized the need to push further to advance real housing justice and center lived experience leadership.
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We use imagination as a political practice, creating space to envision what collective care and self-determination can look like beyond the limitations of existing systems. We pair that vision with the infrastructure and strategy needed to make that change real and implementable.
We know that housing justice requires more than just responding to the conditions of the present, it requires organizing toward a transformed future. We work to offer concrete alternatives to dominant culture through a process of emergence. Emergence, as adrienne marie brown defines it, is the process where personal relationships and small actions create complex systems and patterns, ultimately defining how change happens in nature and society. We apply this to our work by allowing intentional relationships to guide the process rather than rigid plans—allowing a vision for a transformed future to emerge from the community.We are unafraid of principled struggle and are willing to hold difficult conversations, take clear positions, and remain accountable to our values even when it is uncomfortable. The experience of working with us is shaped by how community members feel throughout the process: supported, challenged, and part of something larger than themselves.
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We have built our five-person team with care and intention, grounded in our core philosophy and shared values. Each member brings a deep commitment to accountability, transformation, and the pursuit of housing justice.
As a cooperatively owned business, we value decentralized, collaborative and cooperative decision-making and practice this within our own organization.
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Across 2022 and 2023 we sat down with some special guests who are imagining a transformed housing future for all of us. The conversation series, Alchemy of Housing Justice, centered on lived expertise in houselessness and housing instability in the context of system transformation and housing justice. Click here to listen.
Meet the Team
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![A smiling woman with braided hair and earrings, wearing a denim shirt against a yellow background.]()
Josephine Pufpaff
(she/her)
Josephine Pufpaff is a housing justice strategist, facilitator, and systems-change leader with over 20 years advancing equitable homeless systems redesign, racial equity implementation, participatory research, and state and federal housing policy reform. She lives with her family in Minnesota. -
![Smiling man with long curly hair and a beard, wearing a beige shirt, against a green background.]()
Kevin Solarte
(he/him)
Kevin is a systems strategist and policy analyst advancing initiatives in homelessness, housing, child welfare, and domestic violence. He served at HUD on youth homelessness and housing policy, holds social work degrees, and lives in New York City. -
![A woman with curly brown hair and blue eyes, wearing a white top, standing against a plain brown background.]()
Niki Paul
(she/her)
Niki Paul is a project manager, community facilitator, and strategic organizational leader who approaches her work with intention, collaboration, and care for the people involved in every effort. She shares her time between Austin, TX and Berkeley, CA. -
![Smiling person with curly hair against a green background.]()
Rivianna Hyatt
(they/them)
Rivianna has been power building alongside people with lived experience for over 10 years at HJC, the National Youth Forum on Homelessness, True Colors United, and the LA LGBT Center. They reside in Brooklyn, NY. -
![A woman with short gray hair and glasses smiling, wearing a white collared shirt against a blue background.]()
Sarah Hunter
(she/her)
Sarah Hunter is a big-picture strategist with experience at the local and federal levels. She looks across all the moving parts of a system or community, and turns them into collective, values-based vision.
They make hard conversations feel approachable, dig deep into challenges, and thoughtfully craft intentional solutions.
La’Toya Cooper
LA Emissary