Economic Security

Our Workers’ Rights program advocates for low-wage immigrant workers. As the pandemic exposes the ways in which existing protections and safety nets have failed to adequately reach our client communities, we’re advocating for changes to address health and safety violations faced by restaurant, home care, nail salon, app-based, and other workers struggling to make ends meet. We've also provided hundreds of consults to workers to help them obtain unemployment benefits and emergency pandemic relief; these consults further informed our advocacy for critical language access to benefits for workers with the agency administering the benefits. All the while, we continued to help workers hold employers accountable to workplaces free of discrimination, retaliation, and harassment, win unpaid wages, and organize to improve their working conditions.

For example, as immigrant workers endure disproportionate financial, food, housing, and health insecurity, we’re supporting the Bay Area Essential Workers Agenda and workers campaigns to help others know their rights, from the current San Francisco minimum wage of $16.99 to statewide protections against retaliation that exploits someone’s actual or perceived immigration status. Earlier this year, we helped a San Francisco resident win a settlement for unpaid wages, penalties, and damages suffered as a result of her former employer’s wage theft and immigration-based retaliation while she was working as a loan assistant. After receiving her settlement payment this spring, she shared, “I have friends who have gone through similar situations. There are times where I almost convince them to share their story with organizations with ALC but they are so scared. I wanted to share my story because I hope others can find the conviction to go to organizations who can help them get support and hold people accountable. At the end of the day, this is about protecting our freedom and rights to go to work, be paid fairly, and be with and care for our families.”

In 2022, as we’ve grown our Workers’ Rights team and our in-house language capabilities, we’re also partnering with more community service groups, gurdwaras, and mosques to deepen relationships with Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities and provide culturally-competent direct representation and know-your-rights trainings. Through this outreach, we’ve been providing more legal services to Uber and Lyft drivers, including addressing workplace safety violations and the lack of basic labor protections. We’re also partnering with groups like Oasis for Girls in San Francisco to help young women of color know and assert their rights at work, and with Narika in the East Bay to help South Asian survivors of domestic violence and abuse.

Spotlight

In February, after two years of legal mediation with the California Employment Development Department, ALC and our partners, including Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, California Rural Legal Assistance, Center for Workers’ Rights, and Legal Aid at Work, achieved a landmark settlement with the California Employment Development Department (EDD) to dramatically expand language access in the unemployment insurance (UI) claims process. This includes providing interpretation support in claimants’ preferred language, expanding in-language phone lines, and publishing translated resources.

Californians trying to access their critical UI and pandemic unemployment assistance benefits are facing a range of barriers and setbacks while trying to put food on the table and keep their families afloat. Many times, only a small percentage of people were actually able to get through the state process and speak with a UI program representative. This was even worse for communities who spoke Asian and Indigenous languages, who – if they were fortunate enough to even connect with someone at EDD– were often unable to communicate in their preferred language. Many resorted to paying for services from predatory third-party brokers or notarios, or relying on their kids, relatives, or friends to fill out the UI forms.

Mr. Ali Atia, one of our clients, lost his janitorial job in 2020. As a native of Yemen and an Arabic speaker, he struggled to navigate EDD’s phone lines. As a result, he lost payments, and he and his family endured months of financial and emotional distress. He told us: “It would have been much easier for me to apply for benefits and provide needed clarifications had I been able to communicate with them in Arabic.”

Today, we are doing the hard work of monitoring EDD’s steps forward and holding them accountable to low-income and immigrant workers with limited English proficiency, and helping partners across California build on this settlement to strengthen language access across all our statewide benefit programs. For 7 million residents statewide who primarily speak a non-English language, language access is a matter of survival while unemployed, especially for countless families trying to pull through the toll of dual public health and economic crises.

Our Housing Rights program fights for tenants who are low-income, immigrants, elderly, or people with disabilities. In the past year, we’ve provided culturally and linguistically competent legal assistance to San Francisco and Bay Area residents who are most vulnerable to losing their homes during the pandemic.

Since 2020, a patchwork of state and local protections has left glaring holes in eviction moratoriums that allow landlords and corporations to still find ways to evict or displace tenants. While many tenants and housing justice advocates helped California and Bay Area counties enact some eviction protections through the pandemic, lobbyists working for landlord associations have systematically pushed the state and local municipalities to end these measures and exploit legal loopholes which are now driving a horrific surge in evictions across the region.

California ended its rental assistance program in March 2022, at which time more than 806,000 California renters were behind on rent. Most of these renters are households of color who lost their jobs and income due to the pandemic, and have not been able to get back on their feet financially. Meanwhile, many municipalities like San Francisco were prohibited from enacting their own protections throughout the spring and early summer.

While San Francisco tenants were able to win eviction protections starting in July 2022, the damage has already been done for far too many households. Landlords are using the three months (April-June 2022) when San Francisco residents had neither state nor local eviction protections to increasingly evict people, many of whom lost their jobs during the pandemic and are unable to work after contracting COVID and living with debilitating symptoms.

In the face of this growing crisis, we’re supporting tenants in fighting evictions, enforcing tenant rights, and establishing long-term solutions to protect and grow affordable housing for our communities. In San Francisco, we’re also active members of the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition, collaborating with grassroots and legal aid partners across the city to advance tenants’ union rights, increase funding for affordable housing in every district, and strengthen language and disability access rights for all tenants.

Spotlight

In August, we won an unprecedented settlement against Valstock Management on behalf of Chinatown tenants and the Community Tenants Association (CTA), in partnership with Legal Assistance to the Elderly and the pro bono counsel law firm Ropes & Gray. These tenants – most of whom are low-income and Chinese immigrant elders – lead the fight with the CTA against relentless harassment and discrimination in two buildings owned by Valstock, one of the city’s largest single-occupancy management companies.

Shao Yan Chen, a 76-year-old resident in 1350 Stockton and one of the plaintiffs, rents a small 8 x 10 foot room with his wife and shares bathrooms and a kitchen with a total 50 households on their floor. The living space, while tight, has been their home for almost 13 years. Mr. Chen explained, “Many of us have lived in the buildings for a decade or more. We moved there because it was what we could afford. It has also been important for us to live in Chinatown, where we can go about our lives in a community that understands us and where we feel more at home. The harassment started after current management took over the building in late 2016. We were scared we were going to be pushed out. The community showed up to rally with us, but the harassment didn’t stop. I don’t think the landlord thought we would stand up, but we did. I’m proud we spoke out and that the building practices are being corrected moving forward.”

As part of the settlement, Valstock Management must:

• Provide all tenants who have bilingual English and Chinese leases with Chinese translations of all notices affecting their tenancy;
• End their practice of imposing $200 and $50 fines on tenants;
• Allow plaintiffs to hang dry laundry in their windows as long as they are not fire escapes;
• Ensure at least one Chinese-speaking staff member is available at the property management office during office hours; and
• Ensure that all management and staff at 1350 Stockton and 371 Broadway attend trainings every two years on anti-discrimination and anti-harassment requirements, among other measures.

The Valstock settlement affirms the need for stronger tenant rights and more tenant associations like CTA, in order to protect those caught in citywide waves of eviction, prolonged economic insecurity, and patchwork tenant protections. In April 2022, San Franciscans achieved a local legislative victory in San Francisco when tenants won the right to organize in their buildings and fight against unfair landlord practices and deferred maintenance. Since then, tenants at more than 30 buildings managed by another property management company, Veritas, have submitted petitions to form unions. Alongside local partners and our clients, we persist in the fight for housing justice and stronger tenant protections.