San Francisco’s housing department has told seven legal nonprofits that they will no longer provide funding for some civil legal services, including defense against “informal evictions,” in which landlords muscle tenants out instead of serving them eviction notices.
The affected nonprofits provide a range of legal aid classified as “general civil legal services,” including help for low-income people facing wage theft, problems with family law and elder law, and employment disputes. The groups’ informal eviction defense helps when landlords try to evict tenants by cutting off their utilities, for instance, or changing the locks to their apartment.
Open Door Legal, one of the affected nonprofits, received $3.5 million in city grants in 2024, but would lose $2.2 million if the cuts go through, roughly 63 percent.
“I was dumbfounded,” said Adrian Tirtanadi, the nonprofit’s executive director, who was informed of the proposed cuts in March via an email from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. “We need these services now more than ever.”
The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. In its funding recommendations, however, the housing department wrote that “general civil legal services” were being cut “due to budget constraints and funding reprioritization.”
The six other nonprofits affected by the cuts are Bay Area Legal Aid, the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Asian Law Caucus, Legal Assistance for the Elderly, Legal Link, and AIDS Legal Referral Panel. Last year, the city spent a total of $4.2 million on general civil defense aid for these nonprofits.
Such services have been life-lines for more than 10,860 families and individuals that have been represented by Open Door Legal, the group said.
Naj Daniels is one of them. Daniels and her older brother Reg were raised by their grandmother and lived in her house in Potrero Hill for 46 years. For Daniels, who struggled with addiction and was at times incarcerated, the house was a refuge and safety net.
When their grandmother died in 2020 after contracting Covid-19, an aunt told the two siblings at the funeral that they had 90 days to move out of the house.
Not long after, Daniels happened to walk by Open Door Legal’s storefront on 3rd Street in Bayview. The sign on the door did not lie — the door was open — and, when Daniels went inside, the nonprofit said she may be a victim of probate fraud.
Open Door wasn’t able to help her stay in the house, but they managed to get her a settlement. It was enough to help Daniels, now working as a union representative, get set up in a comfortable, affordable apartment.
Without that legal help, Daniels says, she would have wound up living in her car and likely have relapsed into drug use. (A relative closely involved in the situation denied Daniels’ account, and said the inheritance of the home was more complicated than what Daniels portrayed.)
Not all free legal services are affected by the proposed cuts. Proposition F, a citywide ballot measure that passed in 2018, provides legal aid for tenants facing formal evictions. Cases involving immigration or gender-based violence are also not affected by the proposed cuts.
But situations like the one Daniels fell into are not covered by Prop F. Some 60 percent of Open Door’s cases between May 6, 2020, and July 31, 2023, were classified as general civil cases; neither formal evictions, immigration, nor gender-based violence.
Tirtanadi, the executive director, estimated that half of people entering homelessness have an unaddressed legal issue, like wage theft, unpaid child support, or informal evictions that, if addressed, could keep them off the street.
According to the city’s 2024 Point-in-Time Count, 14 percent of the primary causes of homelessness were evictions, both formal and informal. The rest related to mental health and addiction, but also job loss and family issues.
According to a study co-authored by Open Door Legal, people with access to free legal aid were significantly less likely to become homeless, even if their cases weren’t directly related to housing.
“This isn’t just about high housing costs,” said Tirtanadi. “It’s a lack of access to justice.” Pricey attorneys keep many from seeking advice on issues with an employer, landlord, or a relative, and some may not know they had a legal case to begin with.
Teresita Pobre, an elderly Filipino woman, lives on Quesada Avenue with her two small dogs and a daughter who cares for her full-time. In 2019, a neighbor told Pobre that the bank had foreclosed and sold her house to an investment group. The bank sent her a check for one penny in the mail. Pobre says she never received any foreclosure notices.
Pobre contacted a lawyer, who told her they needed a $1,500 retainer to start working on the case. Then, the Bayview Senior Center referred her to Open Door Legal.
Pobre said she can’t imagine where she would be without the group. “It’s too much to think about,” said Pobre, taking off her glasses to wipe tears from her eyes. “I don’t know where I would be, I’ve heard stories of people who have wound up on the streets. I can’t bear to think about that.”
Open Door Legal was able to reverse the foreclosure and restore the title of the house to Pobre’s name — and win her tens of thousands in damages.
Another Open Door client, Sienna Dunn, said she would be homeless without the free legal aid that helped her get child support for her two young children. Without that, Dunn said, she risked eviction from the apartment where she has lived for more than 20 years.
“I never intended to be in a situation like this,” Dunn added. But, she said, “If I didn’t have an avenue for help, my children and I would be homeless. We would be uprooted from our first home.”
When Open Door Legal opened in 2013, said Hakika Drisker, the senior frontline partner at the nonprofit, it was immediately overwhelmed with clients. Since then, Open Door estimates that it has provided legal help and advice to 20 percent of Bayview residents.
Open Door Legal received its first grant from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development in 2018, under then-Mayor London Breed. Over time, the grant grew to $2.2 million dollars per year, helping the nonprofit expand to six other neighborhoods. In total, it has received $10 million from the department.
If the city grant is not renewed, says Tirtanadi, Open Door will have to reduce its caseload by roughly 900 clients, potentially cut staff, and close offices.
“San Francisco has typically been a treasure trove of resources,” said Drisker, “But not when it comes to legal services.” He can’t understand why, in a city where homelessness is a decades-old problem. ”What do they expect to happen?”
Huh. So the City plans to cut services that keep people housed. Cue more unhoused people, and then cue more complaints about the presence of unhoused people. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Most of the violent mentally ill methheads people complain about are neither homeless (we pay for them to live in nearby SROs) nor the type of people whose eviction cases deserve public money to defend (they are genuinely a nuisance to everyone who lives near them).
I look forward to seeing you cite actual data or statistics on that one.
This right here is what happens when a city and its new mayor choose to defund proven and effective programs that stabilize and improve conditions in our city while funding wasteful, corrupt practices like SFPD’s +5 year history of overtime abuse. Declaring states of emergency, raiding and arresting addicts (not dealers) with zero results burns through the city’s limited funds. Cruelty AND stupidity in motion. Harming SF’s most vulnerable people.
Wow Mission Local. Your opening paragraph shows us one of the huge problems with non-profit funding (and it’s not that the City is cutting back funding). SEVEN different non-profits all offering the same sort of services. That’s SEVEN CEO’s ($100, 000 salary plus expenses ?). SEVEN HR people ($80,000 plus expenses?), SEVEN staff managers ($70,000 a year). SEVEN payroll and legal people. How about an article investigating (yes, ask the questions, do the math) telling us how much tax money would we save if we had one non-profit serving 7 different populations?
How do you expect one non-profit legal office to assist the 383 new UD case filings in February, the most in more than twelve years. CY 2025 YTD, the Court has received 647 new UD filings, up 32.6% from this same time a year ago. The number of future scheduled UD trials jumped to 202, the most in more than twelve years of records. The settlement percentage for UD cases jumped to 68.2% in February, the most in more than twelve years of records. So while you may be looking at what the salaries are of individuals- look at the largest eviction case load in 12 years, and ask yourself if you think a small non-profit can assist all of these individuals ethically. Also, the increase in settlement rather than taking the case to trial lowers court costs and keeping people off of the street who will then need to use all of the services for homeless individuals. One homeless person costs San Francisco $62,000/year in services.
There’s some incorrect assumptions in your statement in regards to nonprofits and how they work. Centralization is not always more efficient. Having 1 mega-nonprofit could actually cause more bureaucracy, slow response times, and loss of trust. Most nonprofits that offer “the same sort of services” often specialize in serving particular language groups, cultural communities, or zip codes. One-size-fits-all services tend to miss the nuances of those communities’ lived experiences. Also the assumption that all seven of those nonprofits have each of those staff positions is highly inaccurate. Nonprofit staff tend to wear mutliple hats, overworked, and underpaid.
EXACTLT PUT!! I work at a non-profit office working with TRC clients- we do not have MANY of these positions and are already overworked (and underpaid compared to private positions doing the same legal work) with our current client capacity. We have had times we have to send someone to another non-profit because we just don’t have the time and resources to ethically defend them. Some fail to understand that there is a legal ethical obligation not to take so many clients to the point your ability to represent them is affected due to lack of time/resources
So if all the non-profits doing this legal work were combined into one, cutting the overhead cost, then you wouldn’t have to “send” people to another non-profit – you would all be working together. Duh!
990 form is available on line. Actual salaries are about 50% higher than your numbers.
I’m generally in favor of as much money as possible going into lawyers’ pockets, from any source, public, private, or otherwise. But putting an objective hat on, it’s pretty difficult to justify taxpayer funding for the lawyers in a family dispute over a $1.3 million Potrero house, one of the examples in this piece.
Last week Supe Walton called Mayor Daniel Lurie an oligarch. Lurie is now in a position to preside over one of the greatest cuts to SF public spending in our history, meanwhile, SF Gate just published an article about all the “billionaires flocking to SF.”
OK Mayor Lurie, whose side are you on?
Are you going to tax the billionaires, and use that money to help Muni and other social services citizens depend on. Or will you stand with the oligarchs?
What billionaires and under what tax authority? Lot of people in SF under the impression that the city can just tax residents of Atherton.
He can’t understand why, in a city where homelessness is a decades-old problem.
It’s not so hard to understand once one realizes that oligarchs always look after their own. Daniel is in office to protect and augment the wealth of his billionaire buddies, not to keep little old ladies on fixed incomes off the streets.
”What do they expect to happen?”
They expect the little old ladies on fixed incomes to have the decency to just go off and die, of course.
It’s class war, not bean-bag.
STRIKE TWO!! And so goes Lurie’s terrible war on San Francisco’s most vulnerable people. This news combined with last week’s cat whisker vote at SFMTA Board (4 opposed, 5 in favor)for stupid service cuts to MUNI rather than filling the $7.2 million hole with rainy day fund reserves is more proof that clueless broligarchs are making tone deaf decisions that will harm San Franciscans. Lurie’s newly appointed SFMTA commissioner Alfonso Felder, an SF Giants admin, broke the tie to support the cuts. Every one of the dozens of members of the public spoke AGAINST ANY SERVICE CUTS TO MUNI, saying it would cause permanent damage to public transit.
> Open Door wasn’t able to help her stay in the house, but they managed to get her a settlement.
This is code for the defendant’s attorneys extorted the plaintiff out of money to avoid dragging a case through the court system with various delay tactics. This is not honorable – it’s an abuse of the legal system.
“when Daniels went inside, she learned that she was a victim of probate fraud.”
So you’re siding with the fraudster?
The grift is multi-layered, complex, costly to taxpayers, and ultimately ineffective unless you are one of the lucky nonprofits or lawyers involved.
as someone who has used these legal services to save my housing, i am appalled at those who would suggest there is malfeasance in the use of these funds. no one at open door has been found to use their funds to enrich themselves or their cronies; nor to buy a dinner retreat in tahoe.
it would seem that ML readers are well off enough to be able to keep their homes.
or perhaps those who face threats to their homes are busy working multiple jobs to make the next rent payment.
the oligarchs of ronald reagan made real estate a commodity with tremendous wealth advantages. they are not beholden to the same rules of taxation for those unable to achieve property ownership. kimk does not need a $100 million dollar home to live comfortably yet that overly expensive house makes everyone’s housing costs higher. house appraisals use existing sales to fuel the higher prices demanded by agents to keep their commissions ever higher.
as long as we continue to treat housing as an investment commodity (REIT), we will continue to have a ‘homeless problem’.
it is also likely that real estate has become a haven for money laundering as there are no regulations to address this potential. the federal government already allows uber rich to buy their way into our country through real estate investment and now wants to make it easier.
What exactly did the lawyer do? Find someone superficial issue in the eviction notice that got your case thrown out? File nonsense demurrers until the landlord ran out of money? Neither of these are justice and it gets worse when you realize they provide the same services to nuisance tenants who aren’t paying rent or harassing their neighbors (sometimes both!).
Le estoy pidiendo mucho a Dios para que la organización continúe apoyando a más familias como la mía..
It was never clear to me why the city should be taking sides in private lawsuits, which is what an eviction case is. Let alone spending millions of taxpayers’ money to do so.
Sure, dude. That means no sheriffs or cops show up to effectuate any evictions, right?
Since we wouldn’t want the government getting involved in private lawsuits?
So you support zero evictions? Even for non-payment of rent?
I’m sure landlords would much rather pay for private law enforcement. It’s the government that expects them to avail themselves of the sheriff’s office to enforce legal judgments.
It’s even worse. The city often pays for both sides. The Tenderloin Housing Clinic is constantly using city funds to evict their nuisance or non paying tenants (SROs are the #1 evictors in the city) while their tenants get free representation from the city. I’ve seen cases where someone who was threatening their building with gun violence got his case dragged out for 6 months with nonsense demurrers by a free attorney from “Legal Assistance to the Elderly” (guy was 40 years old max).
New Mayor Lurie appointed former Twitter exec and Techbro Ned Segal to head the MOHCD. He and Lurie made this despicable decision. Ned Segal is a monster……one of Lurie’s new “austerity czars.” This is not how to end homelessness, a stated goal of candidate Dan Lurie. This moronic move will displace and harm vulnerable people and create even more unhoused folks.
From Mission Local on Lurie’s appointment of Ned Segal:
“Segal is best known for being one of several Twitter executives who were fired in late 2022, when Elon Musk purchased the company and took it private. Segal, who was the company’s chief financial officer, left with a severance package reported to be 25.4 million.
According to a press release about the appointment, Segal will “align the work of key departments,” including those overseeing building inspection, planning, economic and workforce development, housing and community development, the arts commission, libraries, and the airport.”