Sonya Gray-Hunn
Community Organizer (Housing)
Email: [email protected]
Sonya Gray-Hunn is a Community Organizer with Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE). Her work as a grassroots organizer has allowed her to play a role in parent engagement and housing justice movements. In these roles, she helped to organize a diverse coalition of parents to help win $1.3 million appropriations for parent engagement resulting in a new framework for parent engagement and the creation of Enrollment and Resource Center in San Bernardino City Unified School District. She also led local lobbying efforts to push for rent control policies through Proposition 10 and 21; and worked to pass legislation to address rent gouging, housing discrimination, and displacement. Working with state and local housing justice advocates, she has organized to help pass rent moratoriums and other protective measures to keep people housed in response to the pandemic. She coordinated an emergency response aid program providing food, transportation, and housing support to more than 100 families experiencing hardship during the pandemic and worked with legal advocates to support tenants victimized by forced displacement. Sonya is a newly elected Democratic delegate representing the 40th Assembly District.
Prior to her work as a community organizer, Sonya worked in early education as a teacher. As an educator, she observed the many struggles children and their families faced. She noticed that children and their families were demonstrating a higher level of anxiety due to poor housing conditions or lack of stable housing. As a classroom teacher, she understood that more work needed to be done. After leaving early education, she enrolled in school to continue her education as an Americorp Fellow, which exposed her to non-profit social justice work. Since then, Sonya has been a strong champion for grassroots community members, particularly families whose voices are often left out on critical policy matters. As a mother of six children, Sonya’s heart is committed to working for the betterment of her community.
