Staff Members

ESCH staff’s broad and diverse skill sets allow the organization to advocate for affordable housing in the Eastern Sierra region. As a community leader, ESCH has worked on local policy development, Housing Element updates, development agreements, and much more in our mission to support affordable housing initiatives. Affordable housing benefits the local workforce, small businesses, prospective employers, and our community and we are dedicated to spreading this positive message. We thank our Board of Directors, past staff members, and community for their guiding inspiration.

Patricia Robertson

Executive Director
DRE #01947504

Patricia has worked for Eastern Sierra Community Housing for 10+ years. During her tenure she has overseen more than $18 million in housing programs for the rural California region of Inyo, Mono, and Alpine counties. Her work includes grant applications, property acquisitions and rehabilitation, NEPA/CEQA, subrecipient and partner agreements, periodic reporting, budget performance, and loan underwriting for State and Federal grants such as HOME, CDBG, CalHOME, and Project Homekey. She has developed efficiencies in annual asset monitoring and income qualification processes. A creative-problem solver she partners with rural jurisdictions to develop and implement programs that meet their unique housing challenges. Her work has directly impacted the lives of hundreds of local households with affordable housing solutions. Patricia is committed to outreach and public education efforts, teaching multiple free Home Buyer Education Classes annually, bringing legal aid experts to speak on landlord-tenant’s rights, and diligently providing information in both English and Spanish.

Patricia is passionate about community and economic development. Before joining Eastern Sierra Community Housing, she worked for the Town of Mammoth Lakes where she was part of the inter-departmental team that created and implemented the successful Transient Occupancy Tax Enforcement & Revenue Collection Program, to enforce nightly rental restrictions in accordance with zoning and tax codes.

She holds a Master of Arts in both Community & Regional Planning and Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Thought & Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her interests range from sustainable tourism planning and land use law to participatory economic development strategies. She is an active volunteer and serves on both the Mono County Planning Commission and the Mono First 5 Commission. Patricia, her husband, and their two sons love enjoying the wild outdoors that is their backyard– snowboarding, cross-country skiing, camping, hiking, and swimming. When she isn’t working or playing, she loves to practice creative writing and painting.

Erik Guzman-Rangel

Program and Project Associate

Erik Guzman-Rangel joins our team after successfully completing a year-long internship through a partnership with the California Coalition for Rural Housing. Erik is a first-generation college student and holds a degree from Humboldt State University in Environmental Science and Management with a focus on Policy and Planning as well as a minor in Natural Resource Recreation. Erik’s interest in natural resource recreation, policy and planning, and affordable housing development have drawn him to the public sector where he plans on disseminating the knowledge and social capital he gains into the community, helping people break out of the cycle of poverty. Erik will be working on our First-Time Homebuyer programs, assisting with land and property acquisition, and participating in affordable housing development meetings with architects and property managers, preparing grant/construction draw requests, and assisting with financial applications and loan closings. Erik is bilingual in Spanish and English.

Isaura Ocampo

Housing Navigator

Isaura Ocampo has joined Eastern Sierra Community Housing as the Housing Navigator for Mono County. She is a Bio-Chem Major with a focus on Premed at the University of Dominguez Hills in Southern California. She has shown great work ethic in her major over the past couple of years and has begun to dive into community work. She is minoring in cultural and ethical studies in an effort to cultivate a better environment for her local community. She has worked in several volunteer and City programs in Southern California and plans to continue her community work in the Mono, Inyo, and Alpine Counties. She hopes that her coordination of these programs will help connect our clients with housing resources in the Eastern Sierra. Growing up locally she has seen firsthand the need for housing for workforce and families in our community. Isaura is bilingual in Spanish and English. She is passionate about her new role in housing and helping others because of the way her family was helped.

Olya Egorov

Housing Navigator
Certified Disability Benefits Advocate

Olya Egorov is a Housing Navigator at Eastern Sierra Community Housing, serving to expand Alpine County’s housing program through community outreach and stakeholder engagement. She is eager to expand housing resources in Mono, Inyo, and Alpine counties, working towards her interest in building community resilience. Prior to working at Eastern Sierra Community Housing, Olya was a Water Policy Fellow where she coordinated a technical assistance program that supported lead service line replacement in four cities, centered to prioritize the homes of the city’s most vulnerable populations. In this role, she also spearheaded the launch of a peer-learning network amongst small- to medium-sized municipalities, elevating case studies focused on equity and efficiency. During her studies, Olya served as a Research Assistant under the Department of Environmental Science and Policy where she surveyed environmental hazards, evaluating how cities across the nation responded to environmental catastrophes. Olya is a graduate from the University of California, Davis with a major in Political Science – Public Service and two minors in (1) Environmental Policy, Analysis, and Planning and (2) Russian Language and Literature.

Diane Doonan

Grant & Financial Associate

Diane’s career has been directed at improving our communities and insuring that they are good, safe and healthy places for all to live. She has worked in promoting health and well-being, education and children, the protection of our natural resources, and local food access and availability. She also owned and operated a used book store for many years, providing a safe place for community members to gather, access affordable information and educational resources, and encouraging children to read and grow.

Diane has experience in grant writing for rural community housing and infrastructure projects as well as project management, and thirteen years in planning and community development with the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. She has managed work crews and construction contracts, developed planning systems, and organized basket festivals and summer lunch programs, which gave her the opportunity to learn about the residents with truly deep roots in the region. Those projects balanced the need for economic development and modern amenities with the preservation of land values, sacred values, and the culture of the tribe.

Diane brings extensive experience collaborating with nonprofit, federal, state, and local government entities, including the CA Department of Housing & Community Development, USFS, BLM, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Alpine County, Washoe County, Carson City, and Douglas County. Diane has a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Davis in Applied Behavioral Science with a specialization in Rural Community Development.

Her varied background and entrepreneurial spirit give her great insight into the dynamic world of rural community development and grant management and are an asset to Eastern Sierra Community Housing and the communities we serve.

Previous CCRH Interns:

Erik Guzman-Rangel

2021-2022 Rural West Intern

Eduardo Bribiesca

2020-2021 Rural West Intern

Eduardo is a first-generation college student attending Cerro Coso studying construction management. He is majoring in mathematics and is currently taking math courses this summer. He is looking forward to becoming part of affordable housing developments as a way to invest in myself and combine affordable housing knowledge with the physical aspect of a development. He hopes to play a prominent role in rural affordable housing developments across the state.

Jake Castro

2019-2020 Rural West Intern

Jake Castro is our Rural West Intern for the 2019-2020 program year, through a partnership with the California Coalition for Rural Housing. He is a first-generation college student currently studying Liberal Arts: Math & Science at Cerro Coso Community College, pursuing a career in civil engineering. Civil engineering and affordable housing are particularly interesting to him because he is drawn to service and assisting others to achieve economic opportunity. He is taking classes over the summer and hopes to graduate from Cerro Coso Community College in December of 2020. He will be working at Eastern Sierra Community Housing part-time throughout the program year, learning valuable skills in community lending, asset management, and affordable housing development. In addition, as part of the program he will attend an intensive training at UC Davis as well as professional conferences. We are excited to welcome Jake to our team!