Joanne Grell is a tenant leader with Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA), a Southwest Bronx–based grassroots housing justice organization dedicated to building tenant power and fighting for truly affordable, community-controlled housing. She was a co-chair of the Freeze the Rent campaign with the NYS Tenant Bloc/Housing Justice for All and is currently a co-chair on the Mass Governance Steering Committee with the Tenant Bloc. She was appointed to join the Organizing Committee for Mayor Mamdani’s transition team, and in her spare time she is a member of her local community board, where she sits on the Housing and Zoning and Municipal Services Committees. Joanne is an Executive Legal Assistant at a major NYC Hospital organization and has been a proud rent stabilized tenant for the past 24 years, in the same apartment she raised her two children in as a single mother.