Staff members from Stay Housed LA work with renters with questions about their rights at a renters workshop Nov. 8 in Bell Gardens. Stay Housed LA offers legal services to tenants throughout Los Angeles County.
Courtesy photo
Wave Staff Report
BELL GARDENS — Stay Housed LA attorneys and community partners helped more than 40 renters and their families in Southeast Los Angles County facing eviction, harassment, and rent hikes understand their rights and resources to help them stay in their homes.
At a tenant rights workshop Nov. 8 at Veterans Park, Stay Housed LA member Jasmine Gonzalez of Eastyard Communities for Environmental Justice presented an overview of renter protections across the county, followed by one-on-one consultations from nearly a dozen attorneys and legal staff.
“These experiences can be very stressful, but as you start to understand your rights, you’ll find out how you can defend yourself,” said Gonzalez, whose presentation covered the renter protections available, including restrictions on rent increases and how to access free legal help and resources to advocate for yourself.
“We all have a right to an affordable place to live,” said Lucia Veloz, a Bell Gardens resident facing eviction and harassment who has been helped by Stay Housed. “The owner of my apartment told my family we had to leave in two months, and I was terrified. I thought about my children – where are we going to go?
“But I went to a Stay Housed LA legal clinic and found out I have rights. If an owner wants to evict someone, they need to prove certain things, and it’s not easy to evict a family who for years has paid and taken care of the place. When my attorney eventually told us we can stay in our home, I was astonished that something good came out of this. I am so grateful.”
Some cities in Los Angeles County, including Bell Gardens, protect residents from excessive rent hikes by a rent stabilization ordinance and relocation assistance programs — but not all residents are aware, and protections vary among nearby cities. In addition to the protections in their cities, workshop attendees asked about protections for mobile homes.
“Your housing rights in a mobile home depend largely on whether you own the mobile home and rent the lot, or whether you rent both the mobile home and the lot,” said Stay Housed LA attorney Natalie Knott of Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “But you do have protections, and you should seek out Stay Housed LA for help.
Stay Housed LA members are helping multiple communities of renters organize, take action and avoid eviction in the Southeast cities. In Cudahy, 90 families residing in a mobile home park received invalid termination notices for a compliance issue. The city of Cudahy has policy protections to keep them housed and Stay Housed LA is working to help them.
Stay Housed LA also is helping a group of Paramount mobile home residents who recently received notices of monthly rent increases of up to $500, to push that city to establish a rent stabilization ordinance. The city of Bellowns land where residents have rented space for mobile homes they own for more than 20 years. Stay Housed LA is helping residents understand their rights as the city considers displacing the mobile home residents and redeveloping the land.
Stay Housed LA is a partnership between Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles with nearly 30 nonprofit law firms and community-based organizations. As costs of living skyrocket, family budgets tighten and the housing crisis persists, renters across Los Angeles County can access help from Stay Housed LA to understand their rights and the resources available to protect them from illegal evictions and rent hikes.
Over the past five years, Stay Housed LA has supported more than 30,000 tenants with legal services, represented 10,000 tenants in court — with a 90% success rate — and educated and empowered 2.3 million renters about their rights through phone calls, texts, door-to-door outreach and workshops like the Nov. 8 event.
Stay Housed LA is made possible in part by the work of the Right to Counsel coalition. As the federal funds supporting this work in L.A. County runs out, an allocation of Measure A funding from the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority will be necessary to help tenants access legal support and resources to stay in their homes.
