In the News Archives – Western Center on Law & Poverty

LA, Riverside And Orange Counties Will Be Among The First In California To Implement Judge-Ordered Mental Health Care

March 29, 2023, By Eric Westervelt, NPR,

On a recent afternoon Diana and Lorrin Burdick share pictures and swap stories with three other parents over a lunch of chicken curry sandwiches and fruit salad. They’re hosting an informal but semi-regular support group at their home in suburban Rancho Cordova east of Sacramento.

“Yeah, she loves having family dinners. Sunday is family dinner day now,” says Elizabeth Kaino Hopper as she and husband, Marvin, show a recent picture of their 37-year-old daughter, Christine.

This ordinary lunch with friends is also a vital one: Every parent here has an adult child with a severe mental illness; a son or daughter who’s also struggled with homelessness, substance abuse and arrests. The gatherings give them the chance to share stories, strategies and challenges of having a child with a serious and untreated mental disorder.

“That’s pretty much what he looks like now,” says Diana Burdick as she shows the others a phone shot of her son, Michael, 49, who has lived on the streets for a nearly a decade.

“Aww, see, anybody looking at him would say, he’s not right, he doesn’t feel good,” Elizabeth Hopper says, shaking her head in between lunch bites.

Eight California counties are going first in a planned statewide, controversial experiment to try to fix a seemingly intractable problem every parent around the table is grappling with: How to get treatment and support for loved ones with serious mental health challenges, mostly schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

Some of these people end up cycling in and out of police holds, jails, emergency rooms and homeless shelters and encampments. The nationwide problem is particularly acute in California, which accounts for nearly one third of all people in the United States experiencing homelessness.

Some cities including Los Angeles estimate that 10% to 17% of individuals who are unsheltered have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. But the fact that so many go without a formal diagnosis, experts say the true percentage is likely far higher.

Millions of Children on Medicaid at Risk of Losing Coverage

March 28, 2023March 28, 2023, By Ganny Belloni, Bloomberg Law,

More than 6.7 million children are at risk of losing insurance coverage once pandemic-era restrictions on Medicaid income eligibility checks are lifted on April 1, according to a report by the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.

Legislation enacted early in the pandemic in 2020 temporarily increased federal funding for state Medicaid programs under the condition that states continuously cover beneficiaries until the end of the public health emergency. The ranks of Medicaid beneficiaries grew by nearly 20 million people as the program acted as a health insurance safety net. However, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 slowly unwinds the federal continuous coverage requirement through May 2024, allowing states to start eligibility redeterminations next month for all 83.5 million Medicaid beneficiaries—including more than 34.2 million children.

To protect children in low-income families, the Consolidated Appropriations Act requires states to provide 12 months of continuous Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program eligibility to children under 19 beginning Jan. 1, 2024, if they don’t already do so. Most states have some form of continuous eligibility for children to protect them from losing coverage during redeterminations of their parents’ eligibility, but 17 states and the District of Columbia do not have such a provision, the Georgetown center found.

Redeterminations require beneficiaries to reapply for health insurance, verifying their income and ensuring that they meet all the other eligibility criteria to continue to receive benefits. However, the process can be complicated and take up to 14 months, and families who fail to complete it on time may lose coverage.

The impact of redeterminations on children’s health-care access concerns many Medicaid stakeholders across the country. Eligibility checks have traditionally caused coverage losses due to bureaucratic roadblocks, said Jennifer Wagner, director of Medicaid eligibility and enrollment at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.

“Historically, we lose a lot of people during the renewal. Recipients are often sent a form by mail to the last known address, which may have changed. Some people might not get the notice they got a renewal in the mail. Others might not act timely because they have very complex situations and may not respond in time. Some might not even understand the notices that they are getting. They’re historically very confusing,” she said.

Public policy advocates also fear that chronic staffing shortages will cause state Medicaid agencies to face backlogs in processing redetermination applications, leading to more unintended policy cancellations.

A survey by the National Association of Medicaid Directors found that over a fifth of all state Medicaid agencies have job vacancy rates of over 20%, with some states seeing up to 40%.

The problem is nationwide, even in well-funded states like California, which invested $146 million into its unwinding strategy, stakeholders say. California has done little to rectify the chronic shortages in front-line Medicaid workers in its 58 counties, David Kane, senior attorney at the Western Center of Law & Poverty, said.

Inland Empire Politicians Ignoring Housing Crisis While Conjuring Warehouse Crisis

March 27, 2023March 27, 2023, By Hallie Kutak and Nisha Vyas, Special to The Desert Sun,

The telltale signs of income inequality, skyrocketing housing costs and chronic homelessness point to a grim reality. California is in a severe, escalating affordable housing crisis.

Again and again, leaders in Sacramento have identified the lack of available, suitable land as one of the main obstacles to affordable housing development. State and local agencies have expended millions in planning efforts to identify such available lands and prioritize them for housing.

But in the Inland Empire, decision makers seem unfazed by this reality and are enacting policies as if there were a warehouse crisis instead.

An astonishing 1 billion square feet of warehouse space has been built in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, with an additional 170 million square feet already approved or pending approval. Warehouses are increasing at a rate five times faster than population growth.

What’s most alarming is that cities and counties are approving massive logistics centers on land zoned for homes. At a time when we should be investing in affordable housing near transit and jobs, our decision makers vote to demolish neighborhoods, displacing residents and rolling out the welcome mat for industrial developers.

These untenable land-use decisions permanently eliminate prime real estate from home construction and bring in pollution that poisons the air for those who remain.

Learning to Fundraise From a Place of Empowerment and Unapologetic Awareness

March 27, 2023March 27, 2023, By Xochi Flores, Heather Masterton, Cinthya Martinez, and April Walker for Community Centric Fundraising Hub,

When community-centric fundraising (CCF) first popped on my radar in 2020, it felt like a family reunion. Suddenly, I had kinfolk nationwide asking the same questions that repeatedly bounced around in my head. Questions such as is fundraising supposed to be this complicated? How can one ultra-wealthy donor be the hero of everyone else’s story? And when do I get to take this mask off?

As with any budding movement, the critiques around CCF’s principles were plentiful, and the feigned interest equally so. Many were quick to dismiss community-centric fundraising as something that simply would not work. But for those of us who resonated deeply with CCF’s commitment to reducing harm and advancing social justice, we welcomed the opportunity to approach our work in new and bold ways.

Among the CCF family I have found is the development team at the Western Center on Law & Poverty (WCLP). As a consultant for WCLP’s development team, I am grateful that the organization’s fundraisers are as bold as they come. Not because the team has everything figured out but because they do not shy away from hard conversations about wealth, power, reparations, and the like. The team’s commitment to community-centric fundraising does not manifest as a checklist but rather as permission to question the model of fundraising we inherited. Centering community is the foundation of how we treat each other and hold space to challenge a system we often want to dismantle (a system that we also recognize pays our bills).

This January, WCLP’s development team convened for an in-person retreat to lean into the CCF principles and chart our path for the year. We left the retreat with a new development team mission statement, clarity on our shared values, and the resolve to continually wrestle with what is uncomfortable. Our team, composed of four women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, is fertile ground to try things differently and to fundraise from a place of empowered and unapologetic awareness.

Because we know our work is far from done, we want to share our journey with others. We hope our transparency inspires and catalyzes, and we look forward to learning from our extended CCF family along the way.

Mobile home parks offer refuge from California’s housing squeeze. Who’s watching them?

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023, By Manuela Tobias, CalMatters,

Bobby Riley moved to Stockton Park Village to live out his days in peace.

In 2018, the 87-year-old retired construction worker tucked his used camper trailer into the farthest lot of the horseshoe-shaped mobile home court off a tree-lined street in the outskirts of Stockton. The community’s handyman, Buzz, helped him build a porch and a patio to ground his trailer and enclosed it with a white wooden fence. He set up a swingset on the grassy common area across the way for when his granddaughter, Brooke, came to visit.

But the little piece of heaven he sought soon became a living hell.

Park owners Howard and Anne Fairbanks appear to have abandoned the property in early 2020 and later that year manager Maria Mendoza died, opening it up to squatters and illegal dumping, according to interviews with the state housing department and court records from a nuisance lawsuit filed by the county of San Joaquin against the Fairbankses. The once-green common area soon filled with wood pallets, dirty mattresses, broken-down cars, discarded washing machines and heaps of gleaming black garbage bags teeming with rats, cockroaches and flies, photos and written reports from state and county inspectors show.

The worst for residents were the pools of putrid brown liquid they have had to wade through, on and off, for nearly four years. County officials first observed surfacing sewage across the park in early November, 2020, according to Zoey Merrill, deputy counsel for San Joaquin County. By February 2021, the problems had gotten worse. A month later, Roto-Rooter came out to fix the problem at the county’s behest but was only partially successful and said the only permanent solution would be to replace the sewer lines at an estimated cost of $100,000. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Roto-Rooter periodically affected minor, temporary solutions, but nobody has replaced the sewer lines yet.

That tracks with what Riley told CalMatters: He had to live with the stench, which seeped into his trailer’s thin walls, for “several months.” His neighbors say it still stinks when it rains.

Authenticity is crucial for wellbeing, says WoCC’s 2023 Womxn of Distinction Crystal Crawford ’91 | NYU School of Law

March 16, 2023, By NYU Law News,

On February 28, the Women of Color Collective (WoCC) recognized Crystal Crawford ’91, executive director of the Western Center on Law & Poverty, as WoCC’s 2023 Womxn of Distinction at the student organization’s annual alumnae reception.

The award is given each year to a woman, non-binary, or gender non-conforming graduate of color who has significantly contributed to the legal profession and whose work embodies the reception’s theme—this year, “Building Bridges: Fostering Wellbeing.” Crawford is the 16th alumna to receive the award.

“My time at NYU was so special,” said Crawford, who was a Hays fellow and co-chair of Black Allied Law Students Association at NYU Law. She emphasized the importance of community and authenticity for wellbeing, noting that several members of her community—her friends from Law School—were in the audience that night. Crawford said that her classmates as well as NYU Law professors Paulette Caldwell, Derrick Bell, Bryan Stevenson, and Leon Higginbotham have provided encouragement and inspiration throughout her career. “Such a wealth of race and social justice leaders and activists on whose shoulders I stand in the work that I do every day,” she said.

Crawford worked as a litigation associate at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips before moving into public service and nonprofit work. Before joining the Western Center on Law & Poverty in 2020, Crawford served in a number of leadership positions at organizations seeking to improve the wellbeing of people of color, including as a program director at the California Wellness Foundation, as CEO of the California Black Women’s Health Project, and as legal director for the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

“Crystal’s tireless work exemplifies the grit and dedication required to pursue justice,” said WoCC co-chair Sruthi Rao ’24 in her remarks.

While fighting battles to improve the health and economic outcomes of people of color, Crawford said, being authentic has helped her maintain her own wellbeing. “You have got to have a definition of who you are—and that’s an evolving definition, right?—and stand by it,” she said.

At the California Black Women’s Health Project, Crawford helped create the Black Women’s Mental Health Initiative in 2000 to advocate for policy change to better support Black women. The first step, Crawford said, was hosting townhalls and panels to ascertain where women were struggling. Grantmakers doubted that women would be willing to speak openly about their mental health, she recalled, but she stayed firm in her belief in the significance of this work for her community. The town halls were packed, she recalled: “Hundreds and hundreds of people were coming to these town halls and other forums.”

In her closing remarks, Crawford noted that a guiding mantra for her has been the Kwanzaa principle of kujichagulia, or self-determination. “This notion of defining who we are and not letting other people define us, that’s how you foster your own wellbeing,” she said. “Making sure that you define for yourself what you’re going to do. Don’t let anybody discourage you from doing something that’s kind of out of the box.”

Advocates push for state amendment to make housing a ‘human right’

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023, By Ethan Varian, East Bay Times,

Should the state guarantee a right to housing for all Californians?

A coalition of anti-poverty advocates led by Matt Haney, a Democratic state assemblymember from San Francisco, is proposing an amendment to the state constitution that seeks to do just that.

The amendment does not define a right to housing, and backers have offered few specifics about what it would mean in practice. But they say it could make it easier for state officials to sue local governments that resist adding significantly more affordable homes. To pass, it needs a two-thirds majority in the state Legislature and then approval by voters.

At a news conference in Sacramento this week, Haney, alongside leaders from advocacy groups including the ACLU of California and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, touted the amendment as a long-awaited solution to the state’s affordable housing shortage.

“This is a crisis, and the status quo approach that doesn’t recognize (housing) as a fundamental human right is not going to get us there,” said Haney, a newly elected lawmaker who campaigned on bolstering affordable housing.

Past efforts to codify a right to housing in the state constitution have failed in recent years. And it remains unclear if the latest amendment can muster enough support this time around. But if successful, advocates say it would be the first of its kind anywhere in the country.

For decades, the state and Bay Area haven’t come close to building enough affordably priced homes for everyone who needs them. That’s in part due to a lack of funding for low-income housing. But many cities — from metropolitan San Francisco to suburban Pleasanton — have also long resisted planning for growth.

Experts agree that underproduction is at the root of California’s astronomical housing costs, which are putting an increasing strain on many residents and exacerbating the state’s homelessness crisis.

More than half of all California renters spend over 30% of their earnings on housing, classifying them as “rent-burdened” by federal standards. And many pay much more than that. The state’s homeless population, meanwhile, has grown to over 170,000 people amid the economic fallout of the pandemic, spiking by at least 20% in Contra Costa, Alameda and San Mateo counties.

Proposed California bill would lower allowable rent increases

March 14, 2023March 14, 2023, By Susan Carpenter, Spectrum1 News,

BOYLE HEIGHTS, Calif. — With tent cities and RV camps continuing to populate neighborhoods throughout California, State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, introduced a new bill to prevent homelessness Friday.

SB 567 seeks to stop workers, families and seniors from losing their homes by strengthening the state’s Tenant Protection Act of 2019.

“Too many tenants are facing unjust evictions because of loopholes in existing law and because rents are rising at a rate working-class Californians simply cannot afford,” Durazo said in a statement. “Homelessness is an issue that is impacting every Californian in one way or another, and we must prevent more families from losing their homes.”

California has the largest homeless population in the country. Over 161,000 people lack shelter in the state.

California alone accounted for 30% of the nation’s homeless population last year, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Homelessness Prevention Act of 2023 builds on the California Tenant Protection Act, first enacted in Jan. 2020, which limits annual rent increases to 5% plus the local inflation rate or 10% — whichever is lower.

If passed, the Homelessness Prevention Act would lower those rent increase caps and help families return to their homes after no-fault evictions by broadening tenant protections to renters in mobile and single-family homes.

“The affordable housing crisis is one of the mot imminent threats to California’s future,” Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Executive Director Christina Livingston said in a statement. “Without bold action to protect families from unscrupulous rent hikes and unjust evictions, we risk a future where eventually more families live outside of buildings than in them.”

Hunger Relief Heroes Ensure Most Vulnerable Households Receive Critical Food Benefits

March 10, 2023, By Steven Summers, 2023 Inductee to Class Action Hall of Fame,

Three years out from the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, it easy to forget what it was like before vaccines when we worried about food shortages, long lines at the grocery store, washing the stuff you brought home from the store, or even if it was safe to leave our homes. In 2020, I worked at an online retailer and I was returning to that job but not until May. I needed a gig in the interim. Through my volunteer advocacy with the Food Bank, I got a contract job helping to organize an event called Hunger Action Day. I had just started when Covid hit and everything went into lockdown and shelter in place.

The event was canceled and without income, I applied for unemployment and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. I lived on my savings till those came through.

Congress passed relief measures to support people like me who were out of work due to the pandemic, increasing unemployment for example. Congress also authorized increased food benefits called Emergency Allotments for people on SNAP to help with the financial uncertainty and higher food prices. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture undermined this relief by saying that Emergency Allotments were only available to round people’s food benefits up to the maximum amount for their household size. That meant that people with little or no income, like me, who were already receiving the maximum would not get any additional help.

When I learned what the USDA did, I was angry and frustrated for a moment. Angry that it was unfair and frustrated knowing it’s just so typical of those who’ve made it their mission to attack safety net programs, especially SNAP. There’s so much dis-information about SNAP out there. Maybe the worst of myth is that SNAP covers a person’s food budget for the month for them or their family. It surely does not. People were receiving the maximum amount of SNAP because they needed it and qualified for it. And they needed the additional Emergency Allotments because of the pandemic—to deal with food shortages, higher prices, long lines, and living in lockdown—regardless of the amount of regular SNAP they were receiving. In those days, just being able to access food had a cost to it. But despite overwhelming bipartisan support for Emergency Allotments, the USDA and the Trump Administration were thwarting the intent of the COVID relief passed by Congress. They were playing politics with people’s hunger.

That is why I decided to take a stand and together with my co-plaintiff Robin Hall sue the USDA to make Emergency Allotments available for everyone. I first had to rely on CalFresh as a result of the Great Recession in 2008 and spending 2009 homeless. In my post-homeless life, for a number of years I was a volunteer at the Food Bank. I worked with a group of volunteers from the community all with some experience with food insecurity, who would advocate mostly on the policy side on hunger and poverty issues. That work was very gratifying and there were many successes. Things stayed shut down for months, when they came back, they came back slowly and different from what they were. I was thinking about how I could continue somehow as an anti-hunger advocate when the opportunity to participate in our lawsuit with the Western Center on Law & Poverty and The Impact Fund.

Housing Search With a Voucher Is Difficult in Los Angeles County. A Homeless Student Received Aid for an Apartment. Then Came the Hard Part.

February 27, 2023February 28, 2023, By Corina Knoll, New York Times,

LOS ANGELES — Many of the apartment listings were outdated or offered scant details. Sometimes the rent was a few hundred dollars higher than advertised.

If she managed to get someone on the phone, Jacqueline Benitez would inquire about square footage, about parking, about whether the landlord might accept a rescue tabby named Kiwi.

But when she brought up her housing voucher, the tone would usually shift.

“They would say, ‘No, we do not accept Section 8, sorry.’ Or, ‘We tried Section 8 in the past, and it didn’t work for us,’” Ms. Benitez said, referring to the commonly used term for the vouchers. At 21 years old, she had found herself stuck in a loop of hope and rejection.

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, an 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.”

Newsroom Type: In the News