2025 Housing California’s Housing Justice Awards

2025 Award Honorees

Allie Cannington

Director of Advocacy, The Kelsey

From the Bay Area, Allie Cannington is a white, jewish, queer, disabled activist and organizer. Since gaining access to movements for disability rights and justice over 15 years ago, Allie has organized people with disabilities on local, state, and national levels, always centering those who experience multiple forms of oppression. As Director of Advocacy at The Kelsey, Allie oversees the organization’s efforts to advance disability-forward housing solutions across all levels of government. Within and outside of The Kelsey, Allie’s work is ultimately dedicated to unveiling everyone’s proximity to disability and to fueling justice movements that are intersectional, sustainable, and intergenerational.

Dora Leong Gallo

President and CEO of A Community of Friends (ACOF)

Dora Leong Gallo has worked in the community development field for over 30 years. Since 2003, she has served as President and CEO of A Community of Friends (ACOF), a nonprofit affordable housing developer whose mission is end homelessness through the provision of quality permanent supportive housing for people with mental illness. During her tenure, ACOF’s portfolio grew to more than 50 supportive housing communities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and Ventura counties, and housing nearly 3,000 people.

Dora actively works to advance policy that furthers the development and operation of supportive and affordable housing, serving on local, state and national nonprofit boards, task forces, working groups, and advisory councils. Currently, she is on the Board of Directors of Merritt Community Capital, Community Housing Capital, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, where she is on her third year as Board Chair.

Ms. Gallo received a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from the University of Southern California.

Oscar Monge

Interim Executive Director, T.R.U.S.T. South LA

Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon

Faith Director for the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo

Penny Nixon is the Faith Director for the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County and the Faith Communities Housing Liaison for the County of San Mateo. Prior to working full time at the intersection of affordable housing and faith communities, she served as the Senior Minister of CCSM from 2007 – 2022 and was honored with the title of Minister Emerita upon her retirement from pastoral ministry. A community leader and political activist, she has received numerous awards and recognitions for her justice work in both San Francisco and San Mateo, the most recent being named 2019 Woman of the Year for Assembly District 22. She also is the founder and co-director of the Peninsula Solidarity Cohort, a group of 30 interfaith clergy engaged in addressing the most pressing social needs in San Mateo County.

Jose Osuna

Director of External Affairs Brilliant Corners

Jose joined Brilliant Corners in 2021 as Director of External Affairs, where he builds relationships with stakeholders to secure funding and leads advocacy efforts addressing homelessness and housing insecurity. His work is deeply personal, rooted in his experience empowering marginalized communities, including former gang members and formerly incarcerated individuals—communities he is part of. This drives his commitment to supporting those affected by homelessness. Jose also serves on the LA County Leadership Table on Homeless Response Alignment, L.A. County’s Public Safety Realignment Team, and the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Multi-Cultural Advisory Commission, furthering his impact on equity and justice.

Joyce Roberts

Senior Leader, Residents United Network

Joyce Roberts is an active member of her community. She shows up, she brings people, and she gets things done. Having experienced homelessness and the hardship of having to move from an apartment she loved because she could not afford the rent by herself is why being involved with RUN and Housing California is so important to her.

Joyce lived in a MAAC property President John Adams Manor in Oak Park (PJAM) for 14 years. In 2010 PJAM was struggling with community violence as a result Joyce along with other community members began working with elected officials and management to improve safety at PJAM. Since then Joyce stepped up to become a Resident Popular Educator through the San Diego Housing Federation’s Civic Engagement Program. There, she trained alongside other San Diego residents. She challenged herself to learn more about systems, policy, and government. She learned about campaigns, participated in role plays, and mapped her community. She changed how she viewed her community’s issues, and she changed how she saw the solutions.

Joyce has become a more visible leader in her community. She has participated in community meetings about local transportation issues and how plans will affect her community. She has organized voter information sessions helping her neighbors understand the implications of propositions for their neighborhood. She has gone to City Council to advocate for equitable investment and development in her district. She has led deep conversations with local law enforcement about changing how they work with and respond to the community.

Joyce has been a RUN member from the start and continues to step into leadership roles within the program as they are presented. Through her work, she has helped residents see individual problems as connected to greater policies and the greater community.

Roxanne V. Wilson

Homeless Services Director, County of Monterey

For thirteen years, Roxanne V. Wilson has been dedicated to reducing homelessness in her native community of Monterey County. As the County’s inaugural Homeless Services Director, she is tasked with creating and sustaining a framework that fosters robust coordination both within and across departments and jurisdictions. Her role involves developing and harmonizing policies, facilitating, overseeing, and assessing systems integration, and promoting collaboration among stakeholders. Highlights of her career include quadrupling the CoC allocation, releasing the Lead Me Home Plan to Reduce Homelessness, and facilitating several partnerships between the County of Monterey and the County of Santa Cruz, Housing Authority, city municipalities, and the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers. She is currently working on standing up four homeless housing programs to address service gaps in rural areas of the county for the chronically unhoused and transition-aged youth.

Legislator of the Year

Senator Eloise Gómez Reyes

California’s 29th Senate District

In 2016, Eloise Gómez Reyes was previously sworn in as a California State Assemblymember. Upon being sworn into her first term in the Assembly, Eloise was named co-chair to the Legislative Ethics Committee. In the second year of her first term, she was appointed Assistant Majority Whip – a leadership position that ensured that legislative floor sessions operated efficiently.

In 2018, in response to growing concerns regarding the workplace culture in the Legislature, Eloise was appointed to the Subcommittee on Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response which produced recommendations to improve workplace protections for Legislative employees and others that interact with the Legislature, through the creation of the independent oversight entity, the Workplace Conduct Unit was created to investigate and make recommendations on workplace harassment claims.

During her service in the Assembly, Eloise championed bills and issues that increase equity and inclusion in vulnerable communities throughout the state. These efforts include AB 2147 which led a national conversation on second chances for inmate firefighters giving them a pathway to expunge their records and pursue a career in firefighting.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Eloise introduced AB 685, which requires businesses to notify their employees if they have been exposed to Covid-19 and report that information to public health authorities. Eloise championed bills and issues that increase equity and inclusion in vulnerable communities.

Eloise, a proud daughter of immigrants, has been a champion for her community throughout her career. The lack of access to quality legal services in her community led her to become the first Latina to open her own law firm in the Inland Empire in order to provide necessary representation to her community.

Eloise graduated from Colton High School and received her A.A. from San Bernardino Valley College. She received her Bachelors of Science degree at the University of Southern California and then Eloise went on to earn her law degree from Loyola Law School.

In December 2020, Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes was appointed as Majority Leader of the California State Assembly, becoming the first Latina and only the fourth woman to hold the position.