Jessica Yager is our Senior Director of Housing Justice Initiatives and leads our work on the Housing-Justice Nexus for our national venture, Community Justice Solutions. Jessica supports the direct service housing work we do across many of our operating programs and, through Community Justice Solutions, leads our national efforts supporting cross-sector partnerships at the intersection of housing, the justice system, and community safety.
Jessica previously served as the director of the Center’s Red Hook Community Justice Center, a multijurisdictional community court and community center in southwest Brooklyn.
Jessica came to the Center with more than two decades of experience working to advance criminal justice and housing justice. She worked as a public interest attorney for ten years, first as an appellate public defender and then as the founding director of the Foreclosure Prevention Project at Queens Legal Services. She then pivoted to public policy. For seven years, she worked at New York University’s Furman Center, a housing policy research organization, as the Policy Director and then as the Executive Director. She also worked at Win, a large homeless services agency in New York City, as the Vice President of Policy and Planning, leading research, policy, and internal strategic reform efforts.
Jessica is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the New York University School of Law.
