Homelessness

California is home to 30% of all people experiencing homelessness in the United States, 67% of whom were unsheltered. Over the prior decade, homelessness in California increased by 22%, and has increased by about 6% since 2020.. “By virtually every measure, the Bay Area’s homelessness crisis ranks among the worst in the United States.” According to Point-in-Time counts, the Bay Area has the third largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the country, and it also shelters a smaller proportion of its unhoused residents than all other metropolitan areas in the United States besides Los Angeles. According to a recent report “formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public — in California, 70% of people experiencing homelessness have a history of incarceration.”

We also know that the urgency of the need for more comprehensive, coordinated strategies to prevent and alleviate homelessness is linked to the urgency of long-delayed reckonings with racial injustice.  Homelessness disproportionately affects people of color and is a racial justice issue. Black people comprise 6.5% of California’s overall population but represent 40% of the state’s unhoused residents. In order to meaningfully address the underlying causes of homelessness, we must acknowledge the racist economic, housing, and law enforcement policies that have historically led to housing instability and economic insecurity among communities of color. Dismantling these racist policies and systems is necessary to addressing, preventing, and ultimately eliminating homelessness. BayLegal works in partnership with our clients, local communities, and other community-based organizations to challenge policies and systems that promote and reinforce racial disparities and to seek equitable remedies for our clients.

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Social Work Team:  BayLegal uses a holistic approach that combines legal services and social work. Our social workers are embedded within our Youth Justice, Housing and SSI Advocacy teams, and engage with unhoused clients and clients facing eviction to help them connect to housing, income supports, community resources, education supports, foster care, and health care. Social workers also provide a supportive anchor and emotional support to clients during the life of their legal case.

Housing:  Our housing team works with clients to preserve and increase housing stability. We represent tenants in eviction cases to keep them in their homes and engage in local and statewide policy advocacy to strengthen protections for tenants and preserve/expand affordable housing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our attorneys successfully advocated to implement and extend state and local moratoria on evictions to keep people housed. BayLegal attorneys also help people fight barriers to housing, such as discrimination based on disability or race, and barriers to housing due to criminal records or poor credit.

Domestic Violence:  Between 22 and 57 percent of all women experiencing homelessness identify domestic violence as the immediate cause of homelessness. We provide a range of legal services (e.g. family law, immigration, public benefits, housing)  to survivors of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, sexual assault, and trafficking, empowering them to be able to live safely and independently from their abusers.

Public Benefits:  BayLegal’s economic justice attorneys help low-income individuals and families to qualify and maintain eligibility for essential safety net benefits critical for housing stability, including General Assistance, CalWORKs, and benefit programs for veterans and immigrants. We work with the state and Bay Area counties to increase access to CalWORKs Homeless Assistance and Housing Support programs.

Disability Benefits Advocacy: Our SSI advocacy team helps clients to qualify for Social Security disability benefits, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and CAPI. We work with community partners, including behavioral health and homeless services providers, to meet with clients where they are, including in psychiatric facilities, county jail, encampments and shelters. We help clients complete applications and appeals, and represent clients at all stages of the process through federal court. SSI advocacy has been shown to increase housing stability and to reduce recidivism, hospitalizations, psychiatric emergencies and homelessness. Our team also advocates with the Social Security Administration to increase access to SSA programs and services for vulnerable populations, including people experiencing homelessness.

Youth Justice:  Our youth justice team helps unhoused system-involved and non-system involved youth access benefits, services, and housing supports necessary for safety and stability. We work closely with youth homeless shelters, and conduct on-site intakes at locations where youth facing homelessness spend time. We advocate for increased youth access to transitional housing programs; produced a report that identifies and shares best practices for supporting unhoused youth; co-created a Homeless Youth Handbook and a guide to help counties ensure housing stability and to maximize participation in THP-Plus (transitional housing for young adults who have exited the foster care system); and successfully advocated for youth not to be exited from subsidized and transitional housing programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reentry Legal Services/Barriers:   BayLegal’s re-entry team works with clients with arrest or conviction histories  to help them resolve civil legal barriers to employment and to live independently. Our advocacy includes assisting with drivers’ license and vocational license restoration, relief from court debt, and criminal record remedies such as expungement. We also advocate on behalf of clients in homeless courts throughout the Bay Area. In addition to individual advocacy, we advocate for best practices for convening an effective and equitable homeless court system statewide, in order to  alleviate the disproportionate burden of traffic enforcement on low-income and unhoused individuals and communities of color.

Medical-Legal Partnerships: Our medical-legal partnerships with healthcare providers provide coordinated access to civil legal services to address social determinants of health. We have an MLP to provide wrap-around civil legal services to unhoused survivors of intimate partner violence who are in homeless encampments and COVID-19 Shelter-in-Place hotels in Alameda County, a partnership with Alameda County Healthcare for the Homeless. We also partner with VA service providers to ensure access to civil legal services for veterans and their families who are experiencing homelessness.

Health Access:  Our Health Consumer Center attorneys help low-income people, including those experiencing homelessness, access medical care and avoid medical debt, which can lead to or further exacerbate homelessness. We help individuals to qualify for In-Home Support Services and Protective Supervision so they can remain safely in their homes.

Consumer Rights:  Our consumer law team helps individuals living in poverty and the working poor to get relief from consumer debt, and student loan debt, allowing them to more easily pay their rent, prevent foreclosures, and remain housed. We successfully advocated for a statewide pause on consumer debt collection activities and foreclosures during COVID-19 and for the Governor’s Executive Order barring debt collectors from seizing COVID-19 pandemic relief payments.

Immigration:  Our immigration law practice provides comprehensive legal services to immigrant survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in collaboration with community partners to ensure the safety and wellbeing for our clients and their children so that they can live independently. We have opposed more expansive redefinitions of “public charge” and engaged in comprehensive outreach to dispel public charge fears and encourage families impacted by the pandemic to access health and financial programs for which they were eligible.

Challenge Towing Policies Impacting People Living in Vehicles: Vehicular homelessness is on the rise in the Bay Area, as are related increases in ordinances and policies aimed at curtailing where individuals can park their vehicles, resulting in towing, property confiscation, and related fines and fees. BayLegal engages in advocacy to alleviate debt burdens for people living in their vehicles.  The need for an end to predatory towing practices that disproportionately impact low-income people and people of color is elucidated in this report we co-authored: https://baylegal.org/towed-into-debt-major-new-report-shows-how-ineffective-towing-practices-in-ca-unfairly-harm-low-income-drivers/. We brought litigation challenging San Francisco towing practices that discriminate against people who live in their vehicles: https://baylegal.org/lawsuit-san-franciscos-illegal-towing. Our advocacy helped bring about a halt to inequitable towing practices that disproportionately impacted unhoused people in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic. BayLegal has also helped bring about improvements in traffic court practices that burden those who cannot afford to pay traffic tickets and fees.  

Advocate in CA Budget Process for Homelessness Resources: BayLegal staff frequently provide input in the state legislative and budget processes to improve safety net and homelessness programs. These past few years we gave public comment with our partners, helping bring about significant investments in homeless services funding, including expansion of the Housing & Disability Advocacy Program (HDAP) to assist disabled individuals who are experiencing homelessness to access case management services, benefits advocacy and housing. We also advocated for other budget wins that will help prevent homelessness, including tenant assistance with pandemic rent arrears, CalWORKs grant increases for families, increases in the state supplementary payment for SSI recipients, and increases in legal services funding.

Prevent Parking RV Ban – An Oakland City Councilmember proposed an ordinance making it illegal to park oversized vehicles on any street that is 40 feet wide or narrower, which would affect most RVs and trailers and was essentially an RV ban on at least 79% of Oakland streets. This would have been detrimental to many unhoused individuals and families: the latest Point-in-Time count in Alameda County revealed that 22% of the unsheltered population, or 1600 individuals, are living in RVs. Due to our advocacy along with the East Bay Community Law Center and other local community-based organizations, the Public Works Committee decided to table it indefinitely.

Oppose Oakland Ordinance Harmful to Unhoused Community Members – A proposed Oakland ordinance would have potentially caused harm to our unhoused clients and community members who would be faced with a misdemeanor simply by being in an area designated a “Safe Working Zone” and not immediately leaving. The city intended to establish these zones to implement cleanings and sweeps of homeless encampments. Unhoused people would have to abandon their belongings and community or face potential harm by the police and would be denied the protection of advocates who would need to leave the space to avoid a misdemeanor charge. We worked with advocates from the ACLU, EBCLC, and community groups to voice opposition, resulting in the ordinance being pulled off the city council agenda. 

Secure Housing for Former Foster Youth—In partnership with National Center for Housing and Child Welfare and Youth Law Center, BayLegal advocated for counties to ensure access to Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) vouchers set aside for former foster youth, who are at some of the highest risk for experiencing homelessness.  For Bay Area counties that have the program in place, we advocated for easier access to vouchers without barriers for the youth, as well as for including more jurisdictions within counties where the vouchers could be used.  In Contra Costa County, we successfully advocated for the creation of a program to allow use of these vouchers.   

Expand Access to Disability Benefits for Non-Minor Dependents – BayLegal successfully advocated, along with the Alliance for Children’s Rights and Youth Law Center, for the expansion of the county duty to screen and apply for disability benefits for foster youth to include representation of non-minor dependents with initial applications for, and age-18 redeterminations of, their eligibility for Supplemental Security Income and Social Security disability benefits. Transition age youth with disabilities who do not qualify for SSI, or who lose SSI following an age-18 redetermination of their eligibility, are at greater risk of experiencing homelessness and criminal justice system involvement as adults.

Advocate for Increased Access to Mail Services for People Experiencing Homelessness – BayLegal attorneys contributed to a report issued by the Western Center on Law & Poverty in March 2023, entitled “Return To Sender:  How an Unreliable Mail System Harms Californians Living in Poverty” and have provided testimony in support of SB 491, which would require each county to develop and implement a program to ensure that people without permanent mailing addresses can access their government-related mail through the county.

Increase Safe Housing for Survivors of Domestic Violence – Survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking have unique needs in accessing shelter and housing. BayLegal participated in a Safe Housing Working Group coordinated by SF Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and Safe Housing Alliance. The working group, made up of service providers and survivors,  developed recommendations for how San Francisco can better serve survivors in the coordinated entry system and how the domestic violence service system can improve access to safe housing.   

Make Homelessness Response Systems Responsive to Domestic Violence – BayLegal advocated for the passage of SB 914 (Rubio), requiring city and county homelessness response systems and continuums of care to include DV survivors and unaccompanied unhoused women as populations for whom homelessness supports are developed, starting on 1/1/2024. DV is a leading driver of homelessness, and 80% of unsheltered, unaccompanied women – disproportionately BIPOC women – cite trauma or abuse as the cause of their homelessness. However, our homelessness response systems do not adequately consider the needs of and data pertaining to these groups when measuring local responses to homelessness. This bill passed into law, aiming to reduce gender bias and disparities in CA’s approach to homelessness. 

Intervene in Lawsuit on Behalf of Unhoused People’s Rights in Tenderloin: BayLegal intervened, along with partner organizations, to assert the rights of unhoused persons and people with disabilities, in a lawsuit through which UC Hastings (now UC Law SF) and other plaintiffs sought to force the City and County of San Francisco (“City”) to remove unhoused people who were living in tents from the City’s Tenderloin neighborhood. We reached a settlement in which the City agreed to create public notices to improve access to the Coordinated Entry System generally and for persons with disabilities in particular. The City also agreed to instruct Coordinated Entry contractors to provide disability law training and to ensure public benefits verification is not requested of individuals when it can be obtained through City departments.

Advocate for People Experiencing Homelessness during Pandemic: BayLegal advocated during the pandemic for the due process rights of unhoused individuals, including a moratorium on sweeps of unhoused persons during the COVID-19 pandemic in compliance with CDC guidelines regarding unsheltered individuals, and for increased access to housing coordinated entry programs.

Advocate in Oakland on Encampment Policies: BayLegal attorneys commented on the City of Oakland’s proposed “Homeless Encampment Management Policy” as potentially resulting in unconstitutional seizures of property and denial of due process rights; increasing criminalization of homelessness through greater policing, which would disproportionately harm communities of color; and uprooting unhoused individuals from their community supports and burdening their ability to access essential services, especially during a pandemic.

Encourage SF to Issue Free Transit Pass: BayLegal’s work with the Financial Justice Project, SFMTA and other partners resulted in the SFMTA issuing Access Passes to people experiencing homelessness so they could access MUNI. The Access Pass is a low barrier, free San Francisco transit pass for people experiencing homelessness, enabling unhoused people to ride transit without risking a citation for fare evasion and removal from transit.  If someone qualifies for the Pass, all past citations for fare evasion will be waived.

Litigate to Enforce Affordable Housing Requirements: BayLegal enforced the California Surplus Land Act, on behalf of low-income state residents and communities of color. The California Court of Appeal upheld the enforceability of an affordable housing law against charter cities, meaning that such jurisdictions must give affordable housing developers the first opportunity to purchase surplus public land under California’s Surplus Land Act. We believe this will increase the rate of construction for affordable housing across the state, by increasing the availability of sites.