The Justice & Diversity Center’s Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP) is now accepting volunteer attorneys! TAP was placed on pause for most of 2021, and revived when Daniel Beaver became its supervising attorney in January of 2022. For the past few months, Beaver has been handling matters solo. TAP is now transitioning to work with volunteers. To introduce this new volunteering opportunity to members of the Bar Association of San Francisco, JDC’s Volunteer Coordinator Liliana Gutierrez Lopez jumped on a call with Beaver to ask some questions. Scroll to the bottom of this article to learn how to get involved with TAP and advocate for tenant rights!
This Q&A was lightly edited for brevity and flow.
Gutierrez: To get started, why was TAP restructured? How is the current TAP different from previous projects (Eviction Defense Program or the Tenant-LandLord Courthouse project)?
Dan Beaver: A few years ago, TAP was also involved in eviction defense. When San Francisco passed the proposition that guaranteed all tenants a defense in an unlawful detainer case, they created a structure overseen by the Eviction Defense Collaborative which in turn oversees groups and firms who provide tenants a defense once an eviction case is filed. TAP then transitioned to a pre-eviction service. Our grant is actually interesting to read because homelessness prevention is the overarching goal. We are not authorized to defend eviction cases, but can do anything up to eviction defense with regard to tenants and their living situation. The goal is to improve the tenants’ situation in their homes and with their landlords so that when we’re done, we’ve lowered the possibility that they might be subject to an eviction, either right away or going into the future. A lot of times we’ll improve their relationship with their landlord through negotiation and counseling. JDC, along with our grant writers, identified this gap and I think it fills an important niche.
Gutierrez: You’ve been in the supervising attorney role for a while now. What issues or trends are you currently seeing with clients and the state of housing in SF?
Beaver: Mostly, people are continuing to hurt financially. Because of that, we’re helping them on multiple fronts. So we might be helping someone with a habitability problem but at the same time they’re having trouble paying their rent or are behind on their rent. So we’ll be both negotiating with the landlord and trying to get them to fix something wrong with the unit, but we also might have our tenant advocate helping them to get in the rental assistant pipeline so that they can be secure. Or the tenant desperately wants to leave the unit but can’t afford to. There are resources, more than people are aware of, for not just rental assistance but first and last month’s rent and security deposit assistance. Sometimes those up-front payments are the only thing that’s keeping somebody from moving from a bad situation into a better situation. So that kind of multi-faceted problem is a big thing we’re seeing and dealing with.
I don’t know if this is a “trend” but 30 and 60 day notices continue to be overused or abused. A lot of times it looks like it’s a tool for landlord harassment. The EDC helps people when they’ve been served with a notice, but like everyone else they prioritize who they can help right now, which sometimes doesn’t extend to people who’ve been served with a 30 or 60 day notice. So that tenant may not get an attorney appointed for them right away, and we help fill that void.
30 or 60 days is often enough time to resolve whatever led to service of the notice, or to buy more time to get to some resolution whether it’s a buyout or something else.
We’re also seeing what in some cases is an abuse of “cure or quit” notices, where the landlord accuses the tenant of lease violations or nuisances, and these in many cases are a ruse to try to kick out a long-term or protected tenant. And we continue to see the usual habitability problems, harassment and discrimination by landlords, lack of understanding from landlords in how to accommodate people with disabilities.
Gutierrez: TAP is opening up to volunteers. At what point does a volunteer step in? What will volunteer attorneys be doing with TAP?
Beaver: Each week our team gets together and we go over intakes – calls and sometimes emails that have come in. We’ll determine first if they are eligible for TAP assistance. We’ll reach out to the tenant to have a more detailed discussion of their situation and whether we can help, or try to help. We’re in the process of developing a roster of volunteer attorneys who have an interest in working with low-income tenants, and for anyone reading this who’s interested, please get in touch with us!
Once you are on the roster, you’ll get a weekly email with a list of potential cases and a short description of each one. That’s when the volunteer reaches out to us. I’ll talk to them and provide them with whatever resources make sense for the case – like a letter template or the appropriate forms or research materials – and then the volunteer would reach out to that client and begin helping them.
And that help usually involves reaching out to the landlord or their attorney and doing what it takes to make a bad situation better, which is vague but it really can vary from there. Usually, they’ll send out a letter that requests, suggests, or demands a solution to the problem that the tenant is experiencing, and then engage in negotiation and try to get the work done, the accommodation granted, that type of thing.
Gutierrez: So the volunteer would step in once the client has been screened and approved to become a client. From that point they would be in charge of the case. Would they be only talking to their landlord or their attorney, would they also be working on rental assistance?
Beaver: Many times they might also be working with an agency, or the Rent Board, again, it can really vary. And sometimes in the course of working on the case we’ll find that rental assistance is part of the puzzle. TAP has an excellent tenant advocate whose focus is on rental assistance, and if that issue comes up, we’ll put the volunteer and our advocate together to get the process started.
But as far as who they are dealing with, whether it’s a landlord, a management company, an agency, etc., the volunteer is always trying to keep the tenant housed and improve their living situation, and so a lot of times we describe the main task as negotiation.
Liliana: Can this be also categorized as mediation?
Beaver: Well, we are the tenant advocate, so not really. The Bar Association of San Francisco has something called the Conflict Intervention Service. They are mediators, they’ll get involved in landlord-tenant disputes and quickly try to resolve it. What we’re doing here is a little more traditional lawyering, where we’re advocating, representing the tenant as their lawyer, and communicating with the landlord or whoever. But there is an aspect of mediation because again, we’re trying to work with the other side to keep the client housed. Still, it’s more negotiating rather than meditating.
Gutierrez: The goal is different. With mediation, the goal is a quick and effective end to the conflict. What you would be doing at TAP is more advocating for the tenant. Is that correct?
Beaver: Right, although we also want a quick and effective end to the problem. Advocating, negotiating, and mediating are all skills that we use in almost every case. And I always try to go back to our mandate in our grant which is to prevent homelessness, right? So a lot of the time, that initial contact with the other side is a demand, but it also has to be clear that there’s a solution that many times helps both sides. If we get defects fixed on a tenant’s behalf, that benefits the landlord too, although they don’t always see it that way. But it can be a fine line, advocating while not inadvertently making things worse for the tenant. So we’re not not mediating but there are certainly mediation skills that are useful.
Gutierrez: This kind of sounds like it could be a bit of a tricky situation, right, making sure you don’t cross any lines and making sure that you don’t create a tense situation. If volunteers want to take on a case, what level of experience do they need? How much support are they able to get from the supervising attorney, who is you?
Beaver: We’re looking for five years of experience or more, in general. Housing law experience is not necessary. In terms of being able to ask questions, our paralegal Roger and I will always be here to answer any questions and give some guidance. We will always encourage volunteers to email, call, and say, “hey this is where we’re at, am I going in the right direction?” I’m really going to kind of encourage them to do that and really that will depend on the volunteer.
There will be some people who don’t need any direction at all. They can take it and run with it. We will provide them with templates if they need them. There’s very little that they’ll be doing that hasn’t been done before. While the facts of each case are different, there’s always a few cases and things that you say in a habitability demand letter. There’s always a few things you reference, federal and state statutes, when you’re asking for someone to accommodate a disability. So there is always support.
Gutierrez: What level of scope are TAP cases? Do you have a time frame of how long these cases can take?
Beaver: I’d say there’s no typical situation, but it’s between 2 – 10 hours and it can be over the course of two weeks to a few months. It’s really hard to pin down after that because sometimes things resolve really quickly and other times they drag on a little bit. 10 hours would definitely be on the high end and 2 hours is certainly possible in some of these situations. I’d say more typical is 2 to 5 with some going longer.
As far as scope, we help with the entire non-eviction housing situation, so it’s full scope in that regard, for the housing issues we are handling. There’s no litigation, so it’s not what I understand as limited scope.
Gutierrez: Are some of these opportunities in person or remote? What’s your experience been?
It’s mostly remote. If there is a client who, for whatever life situation they have, needs or wants to meet in person, we’ll do that on occasion, and will more and more as public health mandates allow. And sometimes these things can be resolved with the attorneys or the attorney and the management company representative going to the unit and looking at it themselves, especially if there are attorneys on both sides. A lot of times the attorneys are talking past each other and they haven’t really seen the unit, so from time to time it actually helps to go out and look at the property. But for the most part, it will be remote with the occasional opportunity for in-person. Again, it’s not litigation, no one’s ever going to be inside a courtroom, and almost every meeting the volunteer will have will be remote.
Gutierrez: At what point does the attorney take a step back in the case? If the situation does go to eviction, is the attorney allowed to then take on that case as a solo pro bono case?
Beaver: If that attorney has very specific unlawful detainer tenant defense experience where they are either currently in tenant defense or have done it for years, or they’ve been in more than 10 or 15 addiction trials, then that person can stay if the tenant agrees. Especially in San Francisco, an eviction lawsuit involves completely different skills. At that point you’re litigating a very specific type of lawsuit, you’ve got somebody’s life in your hands, literally. If they lose, the client could be homeless, they need to have very specific litigation skills. They have to know how to conduct discovery, they have to know how to conduct depositions, and they have to know the rules of evidence. That attorney can only stay on if they demonstrated a really detailed background of unlawful detainer defense. Otherwise, we refer immediately to EDC.
Gutierrez: Will it continue to be a TAP case?
Beaver: No, it wouldn’t. I would do a full hand off and I would personally stay interested but TAP would be completely off the case.
Gutierrez: At what point does an attorney then step back? Is there a point where an attorney can say, “Ok this is getting too close to eviction?”
Beaver: I would hope that the volunteer would be in contact with me and if things have taken a turn for the worse we’d be triaging the situation. We can always step in and take whatever steps are appropriate. Again, the goal here is to keep the tenant house. We really do work to not get closer to eviction than when we started.
A kind of related situation is, occasionally we do have tenants who want us to be these really forceful advocates for them because they feel that they’ve been wronged. And we’ll advocate for a tenant for sure, but we don’t file affirmative cases for our clients, like for damages. We can refer them out if that’s what they are looking for, and we try to determine that up front.
But to your point, if our volunteer feels that it’s going sideways then we’ll step in. And if it does get very close to eviction, we would usually refer to EDC. If we keep our goal of preventing homelessness in mind, it helps a lot.
Gutierrez: It’s tricky and I appreciate that you’re continuously thinking about the original goal on the grant. It’s good to focus on that bigger picture.
Beaver: It’s something you have to keep in mind, and it’s a departure from a lot of private practice ways of practicing. And we will always remind our volunteers of that.
Gutierrez: That’s something to consider. If someone is interested in volunteering with TAP, what are the next steps they need to take?
Beaver: They can fill out a volunteer application on the JDC website, and indicate they want to volunteer with TAP and include any housing experience they may have. We’ll review the application and get back to them.
Gutierrez: This has been a very interesting conversation in terms of TAP’s restructuring, the kind of work that TAP does. Thank you for taking time out of your very busy day to chat about this!
If you are interested in volunteering with our Tenant Advocacy Project but have questions, don’t hesitate to email us at probono@sfbar.org!
