January 9, 2026

By SAJE Staff

SAJE is delighted to announce two of our staff have been appointed Activists-in-Residence at the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. Director of Policy and Advocacy Chelsea Kirk and Communications Manager Chris Tyler are two of just three applicants selected by the institute for the program in 2026. 

The Luskin Institute was established in 2016 to advance research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world. It is led by founding director and UCLA Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography Ananya Roy. Each year, the institute invites artists, community organizers, and movement leaders to undertake power-shifting scholarship and pedagogy focused on social change. 

For her project, Chelsea will undertake research to support public housing preservation efforts in Los Angeles and the region. Chelsea is an organizer, researcher, and policy advocate whose work is oriented toward building a better world without predatory landlords. Born and raised across Southeast Los Angeles, she has been a member of the Los Angeles Tenant Union since 2016 and is currently director of policy and advocacy at SAJE, where she leads campaigns to advance tenant-centered solutions to the climate crisis. After the January 2025 wildfires, she founded the Rent Brigade to confront illegal rent gouging through a crowdsourced spreadsheet, practices that have made it difficult for wildfire survivors to rehouse. Her work and research have received national attention in The Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and more. Her writing appears in New York Review of Architecture, Phenomenal World, n+1, Avery Review, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. She holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA.

For his project, Chris  will explore tenant-stewarded methods to improve conditions and bolster building-wide resiliency across single room occupancy (SRO) hotels in Downtown Los Angeles. Chris is an organizer, researcher, and communicator fighting for land and housing: organizing his neighbors, fighting evictions, coordinating assemblies and educational programs, and co-founding the Downtown Local of the Los Angeles Tenants Union in 2024. As SAJE’s Communications Manager, he draws on knowledge from years in the struggle to advance community-oriented campaigns for economic justice while leading the organization’s  work within the NOlympics LA coalition. Chris is a founding member of the first administrative workers union at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a graduate of Brown University.

Congratulations to them both!