Housing Justice for All!

Housing and Homelessness

County of Los Angeles

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Housing is a basic need-and a basic right-yet too many low-income Angelenos with mental health disabilities cannot meet this basic need. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority consistently reports that 25% of homeless Angelenos have severe mental illness. In addition to income barriers, many individuals with mental health disabilities lack beneficial social support systems, experience cumulative trauma from justice or child welfare system involvement or from long-term instability, are unaware of their housing rights, and have difficulties obtaining/maintaining stable employment. Their experiences create complex, interrelated housing challenges: mental health instability affects employment; employment affects housing and health care access; inadequate housing and health care access generates increased instability. High-risk populations (e.g., transition-age youth and older adults) with mental health disabilities experience even higher rates of homelessness and housing insecurity.

Annually, MHAS helps 1,000+ low-income Angelenos with mental health disabilities achieve greater housing stability. Free legal services range from brief advice and counsel to extensive legal representation. MHAS attorneys educate clients on their housing rights and responsibilities and help them resolve direct housing issues such as landlord disputes, unlawful evictions, and habitability concerns. Our team also helps with matters that indirectly impact housing. For example, we assist clients with repairing credit, expunging records, understanding and resolving consumer debt issues, and obtaining/maintaining public benefits (e.g., SSDI or SSI)-legal services that improve their chances of finding and maintaining housing. MHAS also leads several medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) to reach underserved, high-risk groups (e.g., transition-age youth and pregnant women/new mothers). Our housing justice work also entails community advocacy. MHAS advocates for housing rights and trains community partners to understand the complexities of mental illness and related challenges to meeting essential needs and to interact effectively with those who are extremely hesitant to contact organizations with whom they have no prior relationship or basis for trust. MLPs and active involvement in coalitions such as Stay Housed L.A. enable MHAS to reach more Angelenos in need of fair housing and tenancy rights legal services and strengthen larger housing and tenants' rights advocacy efforts.

Homelessness is one of the most widespread problems in Los Angeles. With at least 25% of individuals experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles having a serious mental illness, assisting this population can make a large-scale impact to reduce homelessness. Removing obstacles for Angelenos with mental health disabilities (e.g. minor infractions on records or credit issues), helping them successfully navigate public benefits applications/appeals, and ensuring adequate access to health care not only improve quality of life for MHAS clients, but also impact our larger community. Legal remedies empower clients to obtain/maintain gainful employment, achieve greater financial stability, and meet essential needs. In turn, those with mental health disabilities are better able to contribute to their families and communities in positive ways and become more self-sufficient. As individual Angelenos gain improved overall wellbeing and life stability, the entire community becomes safer and healthier.

Our immediate goals for program impact are for Angelenos with mental health disabilities to understand their legal rights, to have support to pursue legal action when necessary, and to secure legally binding outcomes that afford them economic, housing, and employment security. To determine how successful our efforts are, we monitor client demographics, types of cases, legal outcomes, immediate financial impact, and client-provided information regarding immediate and long-term effects of services. For housing justice/homelessness prevention services, we assess how many direct housing cases we handle each year (e.g., tenant-landlord disputes or habitability) and how many cases we manage annually that indirectly impact housing stability (e.g., employment or benefits assistance). Approximately 75% of the housing justice cases we handle each year result in a favorable judicial ruling or settlement that preserves the client's housing.