We are hosting a Panel discussion revolving around the Ellis Act evictions and the housing crisis in San Francisco, featuring Chandra Redack, Benito Santiago, Erin McElroy, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, and Andy Blue.

As a long-time housing activist in San Francisco, Tommi Avicolli Mecca works with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, a tenants rights organization that offers free counseling for San Francisco tenants in all types of housing, including rent-control, SROs, public housing and Section 8.

For the past six months, Xi'an Chandra Redack has been helping to organize her building of residence at 1049 Market Street against an impending eviction. She is particularly interested in LGBT people of color, women, youth and transgender issues.

Erin McElroy is the founder and director of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data visualization, data analysis, and digital storytelling collective documenting the dispossession of San Francisco Bay Area residents. Erin also organizes with Eviction Free San Francisco, a direct action mutual aid group that fights evictions with tenants facing displacement.

Benito Santiago, born and raised in SF, is a dancer, educator, musician, and activist currently facing eviction by Michael Harrison of Vanguard Properties. Benito is a disabled senior, and has been organizing with Eviction Free San Francisco to fight his eviction.

Andy Blue recently helped organize the Plaza 16 Coalition festival in the 16th/Mission Plaza as a celebration of the community and as a statement against reckless development that drives displacement -- in particular, a 10-story monstrosity of luxury housing proposed to tower over the plaza-- the biggest market-rate development in Mission District history.