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Western Center Roundup – February 2022

Lifting Black Voices, Centering Black Lives


Honoring Black History Month and the Urgent Work Ahead of Us

We began this Black History Month honoring Derrick Bell, one of Western Center’s founding members, past executive director, and a leading voice in the school of that thought that would become critical race theory. We honor our rich history, standing on the shoulders of giants as we continue the critical work of eliminating anti-Blackness in Housing, Health, Public Benefits, and Access to Justice. The urgency of this work was reinforced by this month’s release of research documenting persistent racism with the systems we work to transform: the largest study on birth outcomes in the state of California revealed that Black birthing folks, regardless of income level, continue to face the most adverse maternal and infant mortality rates; more than half of Black Californians (55%) said there was a time in the last few years when they thought they would have gotten better care if they had belonged to a different racial or ethnic group; and the housing and homelessness crisis continues to disproportionately impact Black Californians. This year, we are expanding our team to tackle the racism Black and Brown birthing folks experience, alleviate the burden of medical debt, and take on housing voucher discrimination and environmental racism. We look forward to sharing more about this expanded work.



3/14: Join Us for Meet The Advocates: Western Center’s 2023 Legislative Agenda

Join us on March 14th at 12PM PST as our Policy Team rolls out our 2023 legislative agenda to secure housing, healthcare, and a strong safety net for Californians with low incomes. We’ll be diving into the work of the Consent and Reproductive Equity (CARE) for Families Act, establishing the first statewide Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, eliminating housing voucher discrimination, the restoration of stolen CalFresh benefits, CalWORKs expansions, eliminating poverty tows and much, much more! You don’t want to miss this powerful conversation by the folks on the frontlines of California’s anti-poverty policy movement. You can read about the bills we are co-sponsoring and track the status of our bills’ activities on our legislative tracker page.

REGISTER



NEW Blog Post: Why We Sued to End CARE Court

Senior Attorney, Helen Tran and Director of Litigation, Richard Rothschild discuss why Western Center joined Disability Rights California and Public Interest Law Project to sue the State in this latest blog post: Contrary to some strong opinions that CARE Court is “California’s only real plan for helping our most vulnerable and seriously mentally ill,” Governor Newsom never planned to truly provide behavioral health treatment and housing through this bill. The CARE Act does not mandate counties to provide behavioral health treatment or housing; it creates no new rights or benefits for people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders who are summoned to court to join the CARE process. Rather, all CARE Court-ordered services are “subject to available funding… In other words, services will only be provided as they are available.

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Western Center Attorneys Weigh In On Medical Debt and Housing Voucher Discrimination in Los Angeles Times and New York Times Features

Hospitals run by Los Angeles County could make free care available to more of their financially strapped patients under a new proposal aimed at expanding relief from medical bills — the result of a class-action lawsuit brought by Western Center on behalf of people who had sought medical care from the county. Under the proposed rules, free care would be available to eligible L.A. County residents with incomes under 200% of the federal poverty level. David Kane, Senior Attorney, spoke to the impact of these rules in last week’s Los Angeles Times’ article. People earning under 200% of the federal poverty level “certainly cannot afford high medical costs — or even what other people consider to be modest medical costs.” Making care available to them at no cost “is definitely the right thing to do, because those are the people who need this the most.”

Despite Western Center’s work to pass SB329 to prevent discrimination in the use of housing vouchers, voucher holders continue to face a series of obstacles in securing affordable housing as documented in the New York Times’ recent feature tracking one young woman’s journey to use her Section 8 voucher in Los Angeles County. Landing an apartment in Los Angeles County can be an arduous journey in a region struggling with a housing shortage and homelessness crisis, where even those with steady middle-class salaries have found themselves in a rat race for a home. For the impoverished, the search can feel ultimately impossible.“ Are you going to interrupt your search to fight every landlord who says, ‘I’m not going to rent to you because you have Section 8?’” said Nisha Vyas, Senior Attorney with the Western Center on Law and Poverty. “It’s more likely you’re going to keep trying to find someone who’s going to say yes.”



TOMORROW! Join Western Center and National Health Law Program for a Medi-Cal Renewal Webinar

Over 15 million Californians will need to renew their Medi-Cal starting in June. To learn the latest on how Medi-Cal renewals will work, join Western Center and National Health Law Program (NHeLP) TOMORROW, March 1st at 2PM PT/5 PM ET for a webinar tailored for advocates, application assisters, and community-based organizations. The federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) implemented flexibilities that help people get on, and stay on, Medi-Cal. This continuous Medi-Cal coverage requirement will end on March 31, 2023. Beginning April 1, 2023 counties across the state will begin annual Medi-Cal renewals for all beneficiaries.

Public education, outreach and advocacy will be critical to ensuring that individuals and families do not lose their Medi-Cal coverage in error. This webinar will provide an overview of the federal and state guidance on Medi-Cal renewals, what to expect, and advocacy efforts protect Californians’ access to health coverage.

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Letter to Assemblymember Josh Hoover in Opposition to AB 257

Assemblymember Josh Hoover
Capitol Annex
1021 O St Suite 4540
Sacramento, CA 95814
February 3, 2023
Re: AB 257 (HOOVER) – OPPOSE

As organizations and individuals who work to end homelessness and protect the human and civil rights of all Californians, the undersigned join together to oppose AB 257 (Hoover), which seeks to further criminalize the very existence of our unhoused neighbors in public space. AB 257 would make it a crime to sit, lie, sleep, or store, use, maintain, or place personal property upon any street, sidewalk, or other public right-of-way within 500 feet of a school, daycare center, park, or library. The bill would also make it a crime to resist, delay, or obstruct a police officer or public employee attempting to enforce this measure. We are gravely concerned that AB 257 would further demonize, destabilize, criminalize, and violate the human rights of unhoused Californians while failing to address the underlying driver of homelessness: the lack of affordable and accessible housing to Californians with the lowest incomes. However, we would welcome a chance to work with you and other members of the legislature to advance solutions that address the urgent housing, economic, and health needs of Californians experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.

Given the ubiquity of schools, parks, libraries, and daycare centers, this policy would effectively make it a crime for any unhoused Californian to exist in public space, and put police officers at the frontlines of responding to our state’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis. By framing the bill as means to enhance public safety, this measure perpetuates false narratives that unhoused people are inherently dangerous. It also ignores that our unhoused neighbors include families and children who attend schools and visit parks and libraries. Further, given the fact that Black people and other people of color disproportionately live without housing or  shelter and are unjustly targeted by law enforcement, AB 257 also reinforces dangerous  racialized stereotypes that continue to reproduce systemic inequity in housing, health, employment, and legal outcomes.

Only housing ends homelessness, and at present, California is experiencing a housing affordability crisis decades in the making, with a statewide shortage of 1.2 million affordable homes. Without housing options, criminalizing basic activities of living cannot solve homelessness and may make it worse. As shown by recent research and reporting from across the state, sweeping encampments and criminalizing unhoused people with nowhere else to go is traumatic, destabilizing, and ineffective. People displaced by sweeps regularly lose access to important belongings, including identity documents, medication and healthcare resources, and irreplaceable belongings such as photographs or family heirlooms or have them seized and destroyed. Criminal penalties for sleeping create legal and financial barriers that may make it harder to access housing or services in the future. Sweeps can disrupt service provision and exacerbate well-founded mistrust of government workers and institutions. Under AB 257’s proposed enforcement zones, people would almost certainly be pushed to areas far away from critical services and resources. Finally, a police-based response to homelessness is extremely costly to local governments, diverting critical resources away from long-term solutions like affordable and supportive housing, mental health services, infrastructure, and other critical life-affirming resources.

Criminalizing unhoused people because they are homeless violates their constitutional and civil rights. Courts have found that, where people experiencing homelessness have no alternative housing or shelter, the state is prohibited from criminalizing acts such as sitting, lying, sleeping, or other life-sustaining activities. People cannot be restricted from public spaces by reason of their housing status, especially given that decades of underinvestment mean that services, shelters, and housing options do not exist in this state for everyone who needs them. The effect of such a blatantly discriminatory law will lead to further stigmatization and discrimination of people experiencing houselessness. This discrimination also compounds considering that people experiencing homelessness are also disproportionately comprised of other marginalized groups, including people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people.

AB 257 perpetuates a harmful trend of scapegoating our unhoused neighbors and wasting public resources on inequitable and ineffective enforcement-driven homelessness policy. If the legislation’s goal is, as its author states, to increase safety surrounding encampments, there are many ways to do so that do not require police or criminal penalties: ongoing sanitation services, regular trash pickup, housing navigation resources, and on-site support services at encampment sites while people wait to be connected to interim and permanent housing and services.

While we vehemently oppose AB 257, we reiterate our interest in working with the Legislature to secure additional state resources to deliver on our neighbors’ basic health and housing needs, including through budget investments in supportive and affordable housing, service provider outreach, community-based mental health and substance use treatment services to support our unhoused neighbors in connecting to the housing and care the want and need.

To discuss these concerns further, please reach out to Cynthia Castillo, [email protected].

Signed,
The following organizations:
ACLU California Action
Housing California
Western Center on Law and Poverty
Active San Gabriel Valley
All Home
Ascencia
AVALANCHE
Bet Tzedek Legal Services
Black Women for Wellness
Break the Cycle Project
Brilliant Corners
Build Affordable Faster
California Coalition for Women Prisoners
California Housing Partnership
Californians for Safety and Justice
Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
Centro Legal de la Raza
Climate Resolve
Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco
Community Works
Corporation for Supportive Housing
CURYJ
Disability Community Resource Center (DCRC)
Disability Rights California
Downtown Women’s Center
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
Elder Law & Disability Center
Ella Baker Center
Ensuring Opportunity Campaign to End Poverty in Contra Costa
First to Serve, Inc.
Friends Committee on Legislation of California
GRACE/End Child Poverty CA
Haven Hills, Inc.
Homebase
Homeless Health Care Los Angeles
Housing Equity & Advocacy Resource Team (HEART LA)
Housing is a Human Right OC
HPP Cares (Home Preservation and Prevention Inc.)
Indivisible CA: StateStrong
Indivisible CA45
Indivisible Sacramento
Indivisible San Francisco
Indivisible Sonoma County
Initiate Justice
Inner City Law Center
LA Family Housing
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of The San Francisco Bay Area
Law Foundation of Silicon Valley
Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
Legal Aid of Marin
My Friend’s Place
National Alliance to End Homelessness
National Homelessness Law Center
National Housing Law Project
NoHo Home Alliance
Norwalk Unides
No CARE Court Coalition
PICO California
Project Amiga
Public Advocates
Residents United Network Los Angeles
Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee
Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness
Safe Place for Youth
San Bernardino Free Them All
Silicon Valley De-Bug
SLO Legal Assistance Foundation
South County Homelessness Task Force
Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE)
Streets for All
The Center in Hollywood
The Midnight Mission
The People Concern
The People’s Resource Center
The Public Interest Law Project
The RowLA – The Church Without Walls – Skid Row
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office
Transitions Clinic Network
TRUST South LA
Union Station Homeless Services
United Way of Greater Los Angeles
University of Southern California
Venice Community Housing
Voices for Progress
Western Regional Advocacy Project
YIMBY Action
The following individual community members:
Paula Lomazzi
Casey Thompson
Shelly Williams
Sarah Whipple
Ben Baczkowski
Kevin Green
Christina Gonzalez
Zerita Jones
Haley Feng
Joyce E Roberts
Damian J. Hernandez
Irma Ramos
Kyle Robert Kitson
Sydney Smanpongse
Elizabeth Flores
Olivia Barber
Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez
Ariège Besson
Rachael L Parker-Chavez
Nelowfar ahmadi
In YANG
Gloria Magallanes
Isaac Bushnell
Andrea Martinez
Kiara Tarazon-Molina
Melissa Ceja
NOMPUMELELO FAITH NYANDU
Jacqueline Olivares
Katayun Salehi
Abbi Samuels
Roya Pakzad
Amy Ithurburn
Rebekah Turnbaugh

Western Center Roundup – January 2022

A Summer of Advocacy: Protecting Tenants & Securing Budget Wins


New Blog Post: Voices From the Holiday Strike Line

In our ongoing work to address unjust fines and fees, today we announce a court granted preliminary approval of a settlement that returns over half a million dollars to low-income, system-impacted families in Riverside County. Western Center and co-counsel brought Freeman v. County of Riverside to suit in 2020 to seek reimbursement for families from whom the County illegally collected millions of dollars in daily “costs of support” for each day a youth spent in a juvenile institution. In 2018, we successfully sponsored California (SB 190), which prohibits counties from continuing to assess parents for the costs related to their children’s detention in juvenile facilities – but SB 190 did not address debt collection for previously imposed fees and Riverside County continued to collect them. Our lawsuit challenged this ongoing collection, claiming that the County disregarded its statutory and constitutional duties to assess a family’s ability to pay and secure necessary court orders before charging them. With this victory, Riverside County families who were subjected for many years to illegal collection of juvenile fees move a step closer toward justice — in the form of cash reimbursements.

Read More


Western Center Joins Disability Rights California in Fight Against CARE Court Implementation

Last week, we joined Disability Rights California and the Public Interest Law Project to file Disability Rights California v. Newsom in the California Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute creating CARE Courts. The statute singles out unhoused people diagnosed with schizophrenia, and subjects them to court orders imposing involuntary treatment. While the legislation was billed as a solution for homelessness, it does not appropriate any money to build or preserve affordable housing or for increased mental health services. Instead, it threatens to take away the liberty of unhoused people based on a judge’s speculation that they are “likely” to become a danger to themselves or others. The petition argues that this violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the California Constitution. We are honored to support DRC, the sole petitioner and lead counsel, with Western Center alums and primary attorneys for DRC, Melinda Bird and Lynn Martinez.

READ MORE



California Says Emergency Rental Assistance Program Will Likely Run Out of Funds With Over 140,000 Applicants Still in Limbo

In our ongoing case against California’s Housing and Community Development for failure to meet due process standards in informing applicants why their application for emergency rental assistance was denied, a lawyer for the State of California argued that the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program would need to spend its remaining $177 million on administrative costs if forced to comply with the court’s order to provide basic constitutional due process, leaving no money for tenants. The state claims it will pay its private contractor most – if not all – of its remaining funds just to fix its flawed application process and provide basic information to tenants it believes are ineligible for assistance – information that should have been provided at the time of denial, so applicants have an opportunity to appeal. It’s extremely frustrating that the state has been fighting so hard to avoid giving tenants this basic information that should have been provided from the start. We are alarmed by the state’s threat to use the program’s remaining funds to pay an out-of-state contractor $177 million just to tell tenants the reason they are being denied. This threat raises very serious concerns about how the Department of Housing and Community Development has managed this funding,” – Madeline Howard, senior attorney with Western Center on Law & Poverty.

Read more



Western Center’s Analysis of the 2023-2024 CA State Budget

On January 10th, Governor Newsom released his January proposal for the 2023-24 California state budget. To address a projected budget deficit of $22.5 billion in 2023-24, the Governor proposes to delay funding for new programs, and in some cases ties new program implementation to future year revenue. The Governor’s proposal avoids major cuts, retains significant budget reserves, and maintains investments from previous budgets, including Medi-Cal expansion to all income-eligible adults regardless of immigration status effective January 2024, grant adjustments for CalWORKs and SSI/SSP, and many housing and homelessness investments. While not austere, the Governor’s budget is conservative in its ambition to meet the needs of low-income Californians.

Read more



Western Center Welcomes New Staff: Xochi Flores and Sandra Poole

As Western Center continues to expand in 2023 to have greater reach and impact, we are thrilled to announce the addition of two new members to our team: Xochi Flores as Associate Director of Foundation Relations and Sandra Poole, as Health Policy Advocate. You can read more about their decades of transformational work in resource development, health justice, public benefits, and arts activism and check out our current open positions at the link below.

Read more

JOINT STATEMENT OF OPPOSITION TO SB 31 (JONES)

Thursday, January 5, 2023

As organizations and individuals who work to end homelessness and protect the human and civil rights of all Californians, the undersigned join together to oppose SB 31 (Jones), which seeks to further criminalize the very existence of our unhoused neighbors in public space. SB 31 would make it a crime to sit, lie, sleep, or store, use, maintain, or place personal property upon any street, sidewalk, or other public right-of-way within 1000 feet of a so-called “sensitive area”, including schools, daycare centers, parks, or libraries. We are gravely concerned that SB 31 would further demonize, destabilize, criminalize, and violate the human rights of unhoused Californians while failing to address the underlying driver of homelessness: the lack of affordable and accessible housing to Californians with the lowest incomes. However, we would welcome a chance to work with the bill’s co-authors and other members of the legislature to advance solutions that address the urgent housing, economic, and health needs of Californians experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. 

 

Given the ubiquity of schools, parks, libraries, and daycare centers, this policy would effectively make it a crime for any unhoused Californian to exist in public space, and put police officers at the frontlines of responding to our state’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis. By framing the bill as means to protect children and families, this measure perpetuates false narratives that unhoused people are inherently dangerous. It also ignores that our unhoused neighbors include families and children who attend schools and visit parks and libraries. Further, given the fact that Black people and other people of color disproportionately live without housing or shelter and are unjustly targeted by law enforcement, SB 31 also reinforces dangerous racialized stereotypes that continue to reproduce systemic inequity in housing, health, employment, and legal outcomes.    

 

Only housing ends homelessness, and at present, California is experiencing a housing affordability crisis decades in the making, with a statewide shortage of 1.2 million affordable homes. Without housing options, criminalizing basic activities of living cannot solve homelessness and may make it worse. As shown by recent research and reporting from across the state, sweeping encampments and criminalizing unhoused people with nowhere else to go is traumatic, destabilizing, and ineffective. People displaced by sweeps regularly lose access to important belongings, including identity documents, medication and healthcare resources, and irreplaceable belongings such as photographs or family heirlooms or have them seized and destroyed. Penalties for sleeping create legal and financial barriers that may make it harder to access housing or services in the future. Sweeps can disrupt service provision and exacerbate well-founded mistrust of government workers and institutions. Under SB 31’s proposed enforcement zones, people would almost certainly be pushed to areas far away from critical services and resources. Finally, a police-based response to homelessness is extremely costly to local governments, diverting critical resources away from long-term solutions like affordable and supportive housing, mental health services, infrastructure, and other critical life-affirming resources. 

Criminalizing unhoused people because they are homeless violates their constitutional and civil rights. Courts have found that, where people experiencing homelessness have no alternative housing or shelter, the state is prohibited from criminalizing acts such as sitting, lying, sleeping, or other life-sustaining activities. People cannot be restricted from public spaces by reason of their housing status, especially given that decades of underinvestment mean that services, shelters, and housing options do not exist in this state for everyone who needs them. The effect of such a blatantly discriminatory law will lead to further stigmatization and discrimination of people experiencing houselessness.  

SB 31 perpetuates a harmful trend of scapegoating our unhoused neighbors and wasting public resources on inequitable and ineffective enforcement-driven homelessness policy. If the legislation’s goal is, as its authors claim, to increase safety for families and children as well as people living in encampments, there are many ways to do so that do not require police or criminal penalties: ongoing sanitation services, regular trash pickup, housing navigation resources, and on-site support services at encampment sites while people wait to be connected to interim and permanent housing and services. 

While we vehemently oppose SB 31, we reiterate our interest in working with the Legislature to secure additional state resources to deliver on our neighbors’ basic health and housing needs, including through budget investments in supportive and affordable housing, service provider outreach, community-based mental health and substance use treatment services to support our unhoused neighbors in connecting to the housing and care they want and need. 

 

Signed, 

 

The following organizations: 

ACLU California Action 

Housing California 

Western Center on Law and Poverty 

Abundant Housing LA 

Active San Gabriel Valley

All Home

Ascencia 

AVALANCHE

Bet Tzedek Legal Services

Black Women for Wellness

Brilliant Corners 

Build Affordable Faster 

California Coalition for Women Prisoners 

California Housing Partnership

Californians for Safety and Justice 

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

Centro Legal de la Raza 

Climate Resolve 

Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco 

Community Works

Corporation for Supportive Housing 

CURYJ

Disability Community Resource Center (DCRC) 

Disability Rights California 

Downtown Women’s Center 

East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice 

Elder Law & Disability Center 

Ella Baker Center 

Ensuring Opportunity Campaign to End Poverty in Contra Costa

First to Serve, Inc. 

Friends Committee on Legislation of California

GRACE/End Child Poverty CA 

Haven Hills, Inc. 

Homebase

Homeless Health Care Los Angeles 

Housing Equity & Advocacy Resource Team (HEART LA)

HPP Cares (Home Preservation and Prevention Inc.)

Indivisible CA: StateStrong

Indivisible CA45

Indivisible Sacramento

Indivisible San Francisco

Indivisible Sonoma County

Initiate Justice

Inner City Law Center 

LA Family Housing 

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of The San Francisco Bay Area

Law Foundation of Silicon Valley 

Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability

My Friend’s Place

National Alliance to End Homelessness

National Homelessness Law Center

National Housing Law Project

NoHo Home Alliance

Norwalk Unides

PICO California

Public Advocates

Residents United Network Los Angeles

Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee

Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness

Safe Place for Youth

San Bernardino Free Them All 

Silicon Valley De-Bug

SLO Legal Assistance Foundation

South County Homelessness Task Force 

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE)

Streets for All

The Center in Hollywood

The Midnight Mission

The People Concern

The People’s Resource Center 

The RowLA – The Church Without Walls – Skid Row 

The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office

Transitions Clinic Network

TRUST South LA

Union Station Homeless Services

United Way of Greater Los Angeles

University of Southern California

Venice Community Housing

Voices for Progress

Western Regional Advocacy Project

YIMBY Action

 

The following individual community members: 

Paula Lomazzi

Casey Thompson

Shelly Williams

Sarah Whipple

Ben Baczkowski

Kevin Green

Christina Gonzalez

Zerita Jones

Haley Feng

Joyce E Roberts

Damian J. Hernandez

Irma Ramos

Kyle Robert Kitson

Sydney Smanpongse

Elizabeth Flores

Olivia Barber

Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez

Ariège Besson

Rachael L Parker-Chavez

Nelowfar ahmadi

In YANG

Gloria Magallanes

Isaac Bushnell

Andrea Martinez

To discuss these concerns further, please reach out to Mari Castaldi, [email protected].

California Failed Tenants By Privatizing Rent Relief, but It’s Not Too Late to Fix the Program

“In January 2021, the State of California established the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) to distribute billions in funds allocated by the federal government for those struggling to pay rent due to COVID-related illness or job loss. The Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) was charged with administering the state program, with support from a network of local community partners. SAJE was one of the groups on the ground assisting tenants with applications. In March 2022, with little notice, the program stopped taking new applications. Even so, during the months ERAP was operational, over 600,000 renters applied for assistance, demonstrating the urgent need for this important social safety net in the pandemic. According to the State’s public program dashboard, over $4.4 billion has been paid out. But that number is still less than the need, and does not reflect the hundreds of thousands of tenants who were not able to apply or were denied. ”

Read More

Western Center Roundup – November 2022

New Blog Post: Voices From the Holiday Strike Line

Western Center’s Outreach and Advocacy Associate, Abraham Zavala-Rodriguez centers the voices and testimonios of workers on the frontlines of current labor strikes, as he joins their picket lines and bears witness to the organizing work of Starbucks and University of California employees in this latest blog post.

READ THE BLOG


Tomorrow Is Giving Tuesday: How You Can Support Our Work  

GIVING TUESDAY TOOLKIT



12/13 Meet the Advocates: Mike Herald Career Retrospective Conversation

Join us at noon on 12/13 for a special Meet the Advocates, featuring a career retrospective conversation with retiring Policy Director, Mike Herald and Western Center Policy Advocates: Linda Nguy, Christopher Sanchez, Cynthia Castillo, and Tina Rosales. You won’t want to miss out on this conversation exploring the major milestones of Mike’s advocacy career in Sacramento, the biggest wins, the bills that “got away,” the future of advocacy work to end poverty, and much, much more. Join us as we send Mike off to retirement with this special event to honor his transformational impact on California’s policy landscape.

RSVP TODAY


12/6 You’re Invited: Celebrate Mike Herald’s Retirement with Us!

Join Western Center on Law and Poverty as we celebrate the upcoming retirement of Policy Advocacy Director, Mike Herald! We will be toasting to Mike’s 19 years of service at Western Center and his decades of trailblazing work to transform California’s policy landscape.

December 6th 5:30-7PM at
Mix Downtown
1525 L St, Sacramento, CA 95814

RSVP TODAY


Join Our Growing Team

As Western Center expands to position itself for greater reach and impact in 2023, we have several new positions open: Director of Policy AdvocacyPublic Benefits AdvocateHealth & Public Benefits Policy Advocate or Senior AdvocateHousing Staff or Senior Attorney; & Senior Communications Specialist.

We encourage you to explore these opportunities and share them widely with your networks!

Western Center Roundup – October 2022

55 Years of Building a More Just California 

Western Center Kicks Off 55th Anniversary Year at Garden Party 2022 

On October 11th, Executive Director Crystal Crawford and event emcee Michael Tubbs kicked off Western Center’s 55th anniversary year of building a more just California at our annual Garden Party fundraiser. Paying homage to the Founders and past Executive Directors of Western Center (including the late Professor Derrick Bell) – the trailblazers upon whose shoulders we stand, Crystal shared, “We take very seriously our responsibility to challenge and transform broken systems. We are leaders and leaders challenge systems to say: ‘we can do better.'” In light of the Los Angeles City Council controversy, Crystal and Michael both addressed the need to stengthen alliances to address and root out racism.

We stand in solidarity with many of our partners, including Community Coalition in the call to do better in building the power and partnerships necessary to disrupt anti-Blackness in policies, laws, and institutions. In our milestone anniversary year, we will be spotlighting the ways in which we and our partners have transformed and dismantled oppressive systems and the accomplishments we have secured together to build a California where health care and housing are affordable, food is secure, and systemic racism is addressed. We invite you to follow us on social media to learn more about our history and mission to ensure all Californians have access to secure housing, quality affordable health care, and a strong safety net. 

As our team continues to grow, please share our open positions as we look for new folks to join us in this critical work. Also – we need your help to reach our Garden Party fundraising goal – click here to donate!

2022 Legislative Wins for Californians 

Western Center had an outstanding end to the 2022 legislative session, with 13 of our co-sponsored bills signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. Among the highlights were (SB972), a bill modernizing street vending licensing (SB 972) and (SB 923), a first in nation bill on gender affirming health care. We also passed bills to repeal failure to appear (FTA) license suspensions and repeal the use of license suspension for low-income parents in arrears on child support. Other wins included mandating counties waive work requirements for domestic violence survivors and expanded protections for low-income debtors from wage garnishments. READ MORE about these WCLP co-sponsored bills, two additional bills we provided support on: AB 2594 and AB 2746, what bills we opposed, and what bills we’ll be bringing back next session.

2022 Housing Summit: Keeping Californians Housed 

On October 20th and 21st, Western Center and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation hosted our biannual Housing Summit, bringing together housing advocates from legal services, organizing, and policy groups for the first time since the start of the pandemic to discuss regional housing issues, strategize on our collective work to keep Californians housed, and to build policy ideas and solutions to address our State’s housing crisis. Brandon Greene from ACLU Northern California provided a special address on California’s history of redlining and how the State’s Reparations Task Force is working to repair the harms of this history through housing policy advocacy.

Western Center Executive Director Crystal Crawford Joins CalNonprofit Board of Directors 

We are honored to announce that our very own Crystal D. Crawford was elected to serve on the board of directors of the California Association of Nonprofits – the leading voice of California’s nonprofit community. Two thirds of board members are elected by members, providing a statewide endorsement of leaders equipped to skillfully and thoughtfully advance our sectors’ needs. Crystal is joined by incoming board members: Le Ondra Clark Harvey, CEO, California Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies (CBHA) (Sacramento) and Malcolm Yeung, Executive Director, Chinatown Community Development Corporation (Chinatown CDC), San Francisco.

Organizing for Vendor Justice in California: New Blog Post 

Abraham Zavala, Western Center’s Outreach and Advocacy Associate shares about the history of community organizing for street vendor justice that led to the recent passage of SB972. “On the last Friday night of September, Mariachi Plaza was bursting with beautiful music and enticing aromas. It’s always bustling on a weekend, but this night was different. Hundreds of cheerful street vendors, advocates, and supporters were gathered to celebrate the signing of SB 972 by Governor Gavin Newsom, which modernized the California Retail Food Code to be inclusive of street vendors. This moment was special for street vendors in California. They made history by organizing, mobilizing, and fighting for their rights. This is a victory that will be retold alongside other stories of social justice movements, like the Justice for Janitors campaign and the United Farm Workers movement.” READ MORE.
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Western Center Roundup – August 2022

Making History, Meeting the Advocates, Mike’s Milestones & The Search for His Successor


Opening the Search for Western Center’s Next Policy Advocacy Director

After 19 years of leading Western Center’s trailblazing policy work, Mike Herald is preparing for his retirement at the close of this year. We are in awe of what Mike has accomplished during his tenure – from tackling unjust fees and fines that place a high price on being poor – to securing historic budget and policy wins to expand public benefits for families – Mike has advanced some of the most pivotal policies to end poverty in CA.

“We are so grateful for Mike’s impact and legacy after nearly 20 years of faithful service to Western Center and those we serve. As we prepare for Mike’s well-deserved retirement, we look forward to celebrating him and our policy team’s accomplishments under his leadership.” – Crystal Crawford, Executive Director, Western Center on Law and Poverty

We invite you to learn more about Mike’s Milestones and the many accomplishments made by the Policy Team during his tenure. Stay tuned for more information on Mike’s retirement celebrations to be held in October in Los Angeles and December in Sacramento.

We’ve opened the search for Mike’s successor. View the Director of Policy job description and please share widely with your networks. More Western Center employment opportunities can be viewed HERE.


Meet The Advocates: CA Street Vendors and Access to Healthy Food 

Did you miss Monday’s Meet the Advocates webinar? Don’t worry, you can watch the recording HERE!  The webinar featured a conversation with Rudy Espinoza, Executive Director of Inclusive Action for the City and Western Center Policy Advocate Christopher Sanchez, facilitated by Abraham Zavala, Western Center Outreach & Advocacy Associate. Panelists shared about the decade long history of organizing to expand rights for street vendors and how SB 972 can eliminate barriers to licensing by updating CA’s retail food code. The bill provides a clear pathway for food entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, which is key to expanding access to healthy food and produce to communities across the state. Learn more about how you can support CA Street Vendors and see SB972 to the finish line.

The evening before standing with street vendors to testify at the Capitol, Christopher Sanchez was recognized with the California Latinx Capitol Association Foundation’s Advocate Champion Award. You can watch his inspiring acceptance speech HERE.


Monkeypox: Your Rights to Testing, Vaccines, and Treatment

The federal government declared a public health emergency for Monkeypox on August 4, 2022. California declared a state of emergency for Monkeypox on August 1, 2022. These declarations allow the federal and state governments to work quickly to provide testing, vaccines, and treatment. Senior Attorney David Kane provides critical information in Western Center’s August Health Care Tip: Monkeypox: Your Rights to Testing, Vaccines, and Treatment


The Inflation Reduction Act Passes, Expanding Healthcare Access and Affordability

We applaud the passage of The Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the most historic health reforms since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, providing California families with much needed relief from skyrocketing prescription drug prices, capping costs in Medicare, and preventing major health premium spikes in Covered California. Western Center Senior Policy Advocate Linga Nguy weighs in on how the Act’s passage will translate into expanded health access and affordability for individuals, seniors, and families with low incomes.⁠

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The Interconnectedness of Our Struggles: Why the Fight for Reproductive Rights is Inseparable from Housing Justice Work

” [..]reproductive justice is inextricably linked to housing justice. Safe and sustainable communities are undermined by the lack of safe and affordable housing due to unchecked real estate speculation, rising rents and evictions, and unhealthy environmental conditions. Unhoused people and families who lack housing stability are routinely unable to access reproductive and other types of health care, and individuals experiencing homelessness tend to have higher percentages of unplanned pregnancy.”

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Local government is key to establishing equity in California

As the State of California considers reparations to correct fundamental economic harms caused by slavery, it is local governments that have the authority to either aid or thwart such equity initiatives. A dispute in Fresno, where proposed industrial expansion threatens a community-led plan to address generational equity concerns, is one example. In the coming months, the Fresno City Council and mayor will decide the fate of the southwest Fresno community, providing a potential case study for the ways racial, economic and environmental injustice can play out in California.

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