The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles routinely sues the city — and wins.
In the last two months, the nonprofit has notched victories in three lawsuits over the city’s handling of the homelessness crisis.
Legal Aid also defends tenants at risk of eviction as part of the city and Los Angeles County’s Stay Housed L.A. program.
Last Tuesday, the City Council was set to vote on a $177-million contract for Legal Aid to continue representing tenants for the next three years, with other groups providing related services.
But the night before the vote, City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto sent a confidential memo to council offices recommending that council members “reconsider the award of such a large contract to a frequent litigant against the city,” according to a portion of the memo obtained by The Times.
On the day of the scheduled vote, the council delayed it for a week, until Tuesday.
“[Legal Aid’s] mission includes improving the lives of our client communities through systemic change, which sometimes means filing litigation against government entities engaging in illegal conduct,” Barbara Schultz, director of housing justice for Legal Aid, said in an interview.
Schultz said that Legal Aid’s litigation and eviction work “are entirely separate.”
Through a spokesperson, Feldstein Soto declined to comment. She is running for reelection this year.
The contract, which would last for three years, would award nearly $107 million to Legal Aid for eviction defense and prevention, $42 million to the Southern California Housing Rights Center for short-term emergency rental assistance, nearly $22 million to Liberty Hill Foundation for tenant outreach and close to $7 million to Strategic Actions for a Just Economy to protect tenants from harassment.
The battle over the contract has serious implications for Los Angeles tenants at risk of eviction, Schultz said.
Legal Aid, which has participated in the program since its inception in 2021, will have to stop accepting new clients if the contract does not pass on Tuesday. Each month, about 160 tenants will be without legal representation and about 575 more won’t get advice that could help them avoid eviction proceedings, Schultz said.
Schultz said that Legal Aid subcontracts some of the legal work in the program to groups such as Bet Tzedek and Inner City Law Center.
“We get 600 to 800 eviction filings each month in our district alone. If council doesn’t act, those families will have no help from the city,” City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said in a statement.
The Stay Housed L.A. program has opened about 26,000 cases overall, providing full representation for 6,150 cases and working on nearly 20,000 “limited scope” cases, according to data from Legal Aid. The original contract, which is set to lapse at the end of the month, was for about $90 million.
Measure ULA, the “mansion tax” passed by city voters in 2022, includes funding for the program.
Last June, Feldstein Soto tried to block the City Council from extending the contract without a competitive bidding process, a core tenet she has preached as the city’s elected legal counsel.
At the time, some City Council members grumbled, but still, they opened the contract to bidders.
Months later, the city Housing Department awarded the contract to Legal Aid and the other organizations before sending it to the City Council for approval.
“Our understanding of the city’s contracting process is that it is trying to get the best services it can at the best value and not using the process to influence the political or legal activities of nonprofit advocacy organizations,” Elizabeth Hamilton, deputy director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, which has also filed lawsuits against the city, said in a statement.
Feldstein Soto’s confidential memo cited other potential issues with the contract, calling for an audit of Stay Housed L.A. and asserting that a confidentiality clause in the original contract might violate state public records laws.
Recently, Legal Aid has scored several victories against the city.
In January, a judge ruled that the city violated the state’s open meeting law when council members made a plan behind closed doors to sweep 9,800 homeless encampments. Legal Aid represented the plaintiffs in that case.
In February, with Legal Aid also serving as plaintiffs’ counsel, a judge ruled that the city lacked the legal authority to carry out a state law allowing the dismantling of abandoned or inoperable RVs worth up to $4,000.
That same month, Legal Aid scored another victory when a federal judge found that the city violated homeless people’s constitutional rights by seizing and destroying their property during encampment cleanups.
