Why Benefits Advocacy Is So Important to Me

This month marks 10 years since I started practicing law. In that time, I have helped hundreds of people secure access to the life-saving services they need – cash benefits like CalWORKs (TANF), General Assistance, and SSI; access to food via CalFresh (SNAP); medical care through Medi-Cal, including being able to get appointments with their specialists, getting approvals for medical equipment such as wheelchairs, and coverage for the medications they need; and helped families support their disabled loved ones with In Home Supportive Services. More than money, I have helped my clients to be treated with dignity, to be able to spend their final days at home, to be paid for the caregiving services they are providing, to maintain their housing, and to get the services they need to be able to work.

Oftentimes, the loss of income is the first step in a chain reaction that ends with homelessness. By stepping in at that first step, we can prevent foreseeable hardships, generational poverty and homelessness at the source.

While the majority of BayLegal’s clients are eligible for at least one government benefit they are often unaware or unable to successfully navigate the overly complicated system to access and sustain benefits to cover their needs. Working at BayLegal, I personally help almost a hundred people each year with their benefits. But the real power of our services is at the intersection of government safety net benefits and addressing other legal barriers faced by low-income communities.

Working with my BayLegal colleagues, we help individuals and families in crisis access government benefits to support their other legal issues and long-term stability. Our domestic violence prevention family law attorneys can help their clients access CalWORKs, CalFresh (SNAP), and Medi-Cal to support themselves and their children so they do not have to return to abusers. Our housing team can leverage CalWORKs Homeless Assistance programs to prevent an eviction and keep a family housed. Our Youth Justice Team helps homeless youth gain control over their own benefits cases or access supports so their non-parent family members can take them in. This work helps prevent compounding crises and costly societal impacts such as homelessness. It gives individuals and families, including youth and adult survivors experiencing abuse, the time and stability they need to pursue their goals.

In the last few years, it has been exciting to use my benefits expertise to support Bay Area based Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) pilots as a new model for helping people in poverty gain stability while also supporting local economies. Many of the pilots focus on former foster care youth and families. BayLegal has been the first, or one of the first, legal aid organizations in California to do this work and we have the most experience at this point. Using our extensive experience working with public benefit programs and low-income communities, we have helped at least 8 pilots at all stages of the process, from project design to minimize the negative impacts on other benefits programs and counseling potential GBI participants about their rights, eligibility, and responsibilities while receiving GBI and options when the pilot ends. Data from pilots has shown that GBI helps people build savings, transition to full time employment, spend more time with their children, and find housing.

The current U.S. safety net benefits system needs vast improvement – it is under-resourced, overly complicated and unfortunately will only get worse in 2026 due to the OBBBA changes.

The bottom line is, my clients, like all of us, need to eat, pay rent and have access to health care. I am here to help them do that. BayLegal is here to help them do that.

The past 10 years have been a great experience, and I am so honored to be able to support my community in this way. My work can change wildly from administration to administration. But, for my clients, the need is constant, the attacks are constant, the challenges to their dignity and their character are constant, and their hope and perseverance for a better future is constant. I am committed and I hope in the decades ahead to continue to be able to be there for them through the ups and downs, to be a constant in their corner, standing with them when they feel like no one else will.

Thank you for your partnership and support for legal aid and our community.

— Jessica Mark, BayLegal Supervising Attorney, Economic Justice