Executive Director, Yes In My Back Yard
I moved to the Bay Area in 2011, looking for work. I found a job right away, but housing was another story. I was able to stay with my dad’s cousin in El Cerrito before eventually moving in with two roommates in West Oakland. By 2014, I had been working in the bay for 3 years, mostly as a high school math teacher, but I still didn’t have any savings. The combination of low pay, high rent, and high transportation costs trapped me. I even considered moving back to my parents’ house in Philadelphia, but I couldn’t afford to move. What was incredible about the situation was that everyone was unhappy - even higher income renters I met were unhappy with their housing situation. The only people who seemed to be winning in this were homeowners, and they were complaining too - about too many new neighbors. I felt that both personally, and as a region, we had nothing to lose. The current situation was miserable and untenable and it had to change. So I started organizing!
Sonja Trauss started the volunteer collective “SF BARF,” the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation, in 2014. In 2017, SF BARF split into several organizations, YIMBY Action and YIMBY law the largest among them. Currently Sonja is the Executive Director of YIMBY Law, which works in concert with YIMBY Action and their 67 chapters in 25 states to facilitate community organizing for housing proposals and pro-housing local and state policy. YIMBY Law also supports educational programming, reports on housing policy impact and enforces state housing laws by suing cities, as necessary.Sonja received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Temple University, and holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
