The Tenant Power Toolkit (TPT) is a collaborative project between Inner City Law Center (ICLC) and the Debt Collective that prevents homelessness by helping low-income tenants stay housed. TPT is an unprecedented, free online resource that helps California renters respond to eviction complaints and stay in their homes. The TPT takes tenants online answers to simple questions (currently in English or Spanish and is being expanded to include 12 additional languages), applies all statewide and local laws governing evictions in their jurisdiction, and then generates the required legal paperwork, including an application for a waiver of hundreds of dollars in court filing fees.

For lower income users in Los Angeles County, ICLC files the documents for the tenant electronically. For tenants outside LA County, we provide detailed instructions on how to print and self-file documents. In addition to the TPT itself, we provide regular training for tenants’ rights organizations and legal service providers, connect tenants to legal aid and tenants’ rights groups in their area, and provide an opportunity for tenants to connect with our team.

We are pleased to report that the Tenant Power Toolkit exceeded our expectations in its impact and reach, exceeding our goals for LA2050’s LIVE housing goal: that Angelenos should have “safe housing, no matter where they live or how much money they make.”

Between October 1, 2022 and October 15, 2023, the TPT generated 4,770 Answers, helping tenants successfully answer their eviction papers and file with courts across the state. ICLC e-filed 2,352 Answers for vulnerable tenants in Los Angeles County. Our collaboration educated more than 1,200 people through workshops on the TPT, and more than 50 organizations relayed information about the TPT to their clients and collaborative partners. This far exceeds our goal of directly impacting 500 Angelenos.

Here are just a few examples of our successes with the Tenant Power Toolkit in its first year:

• TPT use has increased almost every month and grown significantly over the past year. The TPT ensures that tenants respond to their eviction cases on time, so that they don’t default and lose their case automatically. Filing an answer without an attorney can be an intimidating or even insurmountable barrier for tenants. The process of filing paperwork is complicated and requires the tenant to be able to go down to the courthouse during work hours, which is difficult for disabled tenants or those who can’t take off work. By making the process as easy as possible and by e-filing and serving the documents for most users, the TPT makes it possible for tenants to fight to stay in their homes. We have assisted more than 2,000 tenants with reviewing and filing their documents since October 2022. 4,770 tenants have used the TPT overall across the state, with an estimated 12,000-13,000 people affected (based on average reported household size);

• The TPT also helps tenants raise the specific defenses that they have in their case, which they must raise in an Answer or else would be prohibited from raising later on or at trial. This feature is what makes the TPT truly special. We have kept the TPT up to date on newly passed local ordinances, changing COVID-19 laws, and more, so that tenants can raise the region-specific major defenses that can help keep them in their homes;

• A Spanish-speaking tenant who lives in an unpermitted unit (a shed behind a house in LA) came to our in-person workshop to get help using the TPT. He does not have a computer or internet-capable phone. He also did not have anyone who could help him serve the documents. By attending the workshop, he was able to get one-on-one help in Spanish while going through the TPT on a provided computer, and we handled filing and mailing his documents. Our weekly in-person workshops have given us the opportunity to assist tenants who would not otherwise be able to use the Tenant Power Toolkit online; and

• Our biggest accomplishment is that the TPT has become part of the “institutional furniture” for eviction responses and resources across Los Angeles County over the course of 2023. The TPT is responsible for filing Answers in approximately 9-10% of all eviction cases filed in Los Angeles County monthly, and over 1/6th of all Answers filed in the County. The TPT has become an indispensable tool for lawyers and tenant advocates fighting to keep people in their homes.

Our goals were to directly impact 500 people through use of the TPT and indirectly impact 1,500 people through learning about the Tenant Power Toolkit as a resource. We are thrilled to report that we far exceeded those goals, with directly impacting 4,770 tenants through Answers filed throughout the state, 2,352 of whom were able to have their Answers e-filed by ICLC in LA County. Our indirect impact, through outreach and education, informed 1,200 individuals through workshops, trainings and outreach events, and an additional 50 organizations, who then dispersed information throughout their networks. We also informed tenants throughout the state via a media campaign, which reached thousands of readers and viewers.

We have worked toward improving access to the TPT by hosting in-person workshops at the LA Public Library on Tuesdays. We also plan to add weekly Friday workshops to the schedule. These workshops were created to help those with limited tech capacity or access in using the TPT. Attendees (about 10 per week since starting these workshops in September 2023) get one on one

assistance in Spanish and English, and internet capable devices are provided. We created these workshops to address an underlying issue with the TPT - that it is an online resource that the most vulnerable will often not be able to use.

Unfortunately, we heard of companies charging $150-$500 to go through the TPT with or for a tenant. The creation of these standing workshops helps address the growing need for more individualized support in LA County, and we have shared our resources with partner organizations to support the creation of similar workshops in other areas so that low-income tenants understand that they can access the TPT with support free of charge. We also created supportive documents for these workshops, including a referral sheet for those who need other assistance, FAQ for library staff, flyers and other outreach materials.

Additional improvements to the Tenant Power Toolkit in 2023 include:

1. Fee waiver fixes (including built-in calculator that compares with threshold limit and capacity to generate a fee waiver form for large households);

2. FAQ improvements, new FAQ re. special denials language;

3. Fixed defense for Ellis Act, renovations, and demolition evictions in multiple jurisdictions; 4. Added harassment defenses in multiple jurisdictions;

5. Updated just cause ordinances when new changes were passed: Petaluma, Oakland, Unincorporated LA County, and others;

6. Added new just cause ordinances: City of LA, Cudahy, Chula Vista, and others; 7. Added new defenses for tenants to raise (when applicable): economic displacement relocation assistance, service of notice to quit in LA, number of bedrooms in notice to quit, refusal to accept rental assistance, rent debt threshold (LA City, LA County, Oakland, and others);

8. Continually updated COVID-19 defenses based on expiring and changing COVID-19 tenant protections in cities and counties across the state;

9. Drafted language around and began to collect increased demographic information, including age, gender, and sexual orientation;

10. Created system and language to text TPT users to follow up and invite them to Monday tenant trainings;

11. Created other guides for users regarding subsequent steps of the eviction process, including an overview of eviction process, discovery (and how to respond), motions, evidence gathering, and settlement agreements; and

12. Various other use, clarity, and style improvements to TPT, in particular to the Spanish site.

13. It is important to note that any change made to the TPT is tested extensively, sometimes repeatedly if there are recurring bugs. This is significant and time-consuming. But it is critical to ensuring we don’t have issues that affect tenants’ experience or the answers that are generated.

Though results generally were as expected, one issue we had to adapt to is the huge influx of evictions, and therefore lack of available representation, for tenants. We have created several guides and host weekly Zoom workshops to help pro per tenants (i.e., those tenants who are representing themselves) handle their evictions past the answer stage (see, for example, new “Next Steps” tab of the website).

Through in-person workshops, direct outreach to other organizations, contact from tenants through our submission form, email, or phone, and our attorneys taking on cases for full representation after the tenant completes an Answer through the TPT, we have been able to improve on the TPT as needed. For example, we have been able to hear about and correct language issues, clarity issues, bugs, and missing defenses. We also learned through attorneys taking full scope cases and through user contact after a few months that some judges might be misreading Answers and wrongly saying that they were defective. Because of this, we convened partners to brainstorm judicial and political solutions for these judges’ behavior and spoke to an appellate attorney about a potential appeal when a case came to us. We also drafted and published an FAQ so that tenants know what to say and highlight in these situations.

While the TPT is designed for pro per tenants to prepare Answers on their own, incorporating in person, hands-on assistance into our services has been an essential expansion of our work. We had to dedicate resources to tenants with limited access to technology or low literacy with growing urgency as we heard more accounts of tenants who were referred to the TPT but were unable to complete the process successfully because of limited connectivity. These workshops require significant resources, including staff and volunteers but have already proven to be incredibly valuable. Also, as much as we hope to ensure full scope representation for all low-income tenants after they complete and file their Answers using the TPT, we must accept the current reality that increasing numbers of tenants are left to navigate their eviction cases on their own and have expanded pro per resources beyond the TPT itself in response.

After meeting with Adia James from Black Women for Wellness (another LA2050 grant recipient), we created a series of posts on tenants’ rights and the eviction process (with an emphasis on how and where the TPT can help) that they shared across their social media platforms in February 2023.

Workshops held at the LA Public Library have been hugely helpful and productive, as we can help to serve the library’s constituents and they provide a central and large space, and outreach and marketing for the workshops, among other supports. The library staff have set up the space, provided iPads and printers, and generally helped ensure the workshops run smoothly and are accessible to as many people as possible.

The Tenant Power Toolkit has been incredibly valuable to vulnerable tenants throughout the state. With the increase in eviction rates and the move to establish a Right to Counsel in Los Angeles County, this work is now embedded into Inner City Law Center’s Tenant Defense Project. ICLC has received funding from the State Bar of California’s Access to Justice offices to continue this work and we continue to partner with the Debt Collective to improve and expand the TPT.

To protect the privacy of our clients and tenants facing eviction, we do not photograph events associated with the Tenant Power Toolkit. However, media articles provided do offer visual images of our work.

• https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-31/unpaid-rent-deadline-pandemic-los angeles-explained
• https://prismreports.org/2023/05/18/tenants-unions-collective-action-fight-rent-debt/
• https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/unhoused-rent-reading/evictions-protections
• https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/05/10/berkeleys-eviction-moratorium-is-ending-heres-what you-need-to-know

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