Fanilla Cheng is a former fellow with the Future of Land and Housing program at New America. Based in San Francisco, California, Cheng is an attorney with the State of California. She was previously a staff attorney at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates (HERA), where she worked with low-income homeowners on foreclosure prevention and home preservation.
Prior to joining HERA, Cheng worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where she represented the federal government in a variety of HUD-insured affordable housing transactions, with a focus on public housing preservation in New York City. While in law school, she served as a law clerk at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration. Cheng holds a BA in Political Science from UCLA and a JD from Georgetown Law, where she was an editor for The Georgetown Law Journal.