ACLU SoCal Files Lawsuit Challenging Efforts to Shutter Transitional Housing in Hesperia

RIVERSIDE, CA – A charitable organization dedicated to reducing homelessness and several of its clients filed a federal lawsuit today challenging the city of Hesperia’s attempts to unlawfully restrict housing and support services for individuals with criminal records.

The ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) filed the lawsuit on behalf of Victor Valley Family Resource Center (VVFRC), a nonprofit in Hesperia that connects individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless to transitional supportive housing. The suit argues that efforts by Hesperia to shut down three transitional homes are intended to banish residents released on probation.

“The city’s efforts to shutter these homes is little more than an attempt to banish individuals with criminal records from their community,” said Adrienna Wong, a staff attorney with ACLU SoCal. “That’s unacceptable and violates the California Constitution and the 1st & 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.”

Currently, the San Bernardino County Probation Department refers individuals released from incarceration who have no place else to go to VVFRC, which provides transitional housing for up to one year, as well as meals, case management services and permanent housing placement.

The lawsuit, filed against the city of Hesperia, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon and other city and sheriff’s officials, argues that several Hesperia municipal codes which were used to target VVFRC violate both the California and U.S. Constitutions. In some cases, Hesperia enforced a code prohibiting residential structures that house more than one individual on probation who are not related by blood or marriage, violating the individual plaintiffs’ right to association. One of VVFRC’s transitional homes was forced to close as a result, and the remaining homes may face the same fate.

The city also violated privacy rights by enacting an ordinance requiring landlords to provide their tenants’ personal information to police in Hesperia for purposes of a background check and registration of tenants in a database administered by the police. Under the same ordinance, the city requires landlords to evict tenants if the chief of police sends a “notice of criminal activity” – even if the tenants are never convicted, charged, or even arrested for any crime.

Hesperia’s efforts to shut down or severely limit the operations of VVFRC are a direct challenge to the state Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109), the sweeping reform package enacted to ease severe overcrowding in California’s jails and prisons. AB 109 redirects state resources from building more prisons to investing in community-based programs that provide services such as transitional housing, addiction treatment, mental health counseling, job placement and more.

Also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are six VVFRC clients who are on probation and have benefitted from these and other services. Without VVFRC, these and other clients would be vulnerable to homelessness, which increases the risk of re-incarceration.

“The city’s stance is not only unlawful but it also undermines public safety by eliminating the kind of re-entry and sober living group homes that provide crucial services to individuals who have no other recourse,” said Belinda Escobosa Helzer, ACLU SoCal general counsel and director of its Dignity for All Project. “Without a safe and supportive environment, they are at great risk of falling into homelessness and returning to criminal activity. Efforts by the city of Hesperia to eliminate this critical resource are ill-considered, unconstitutional and detrimental to public safety.”

Read the complaint

Contact:
Sandra Hernandez 213.977.5247, shernandez@aclusocal.org
Tony Marcano 213.977.5242, tmarcano@aclusocal.org

Via: https://www.aclusocal.org/pr-vvfrc-v-hesperia/ 

Suit Accuses L.A. Unified of Diverting Millions Meant for Needy Students

The Los Angeles Unified School District has illegally shortchanged high-needs students of millions of dollars meant for them under the state's new school finance system, a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges.

The suit claims that improper accounting will cost those students more than $400 million by next June and up to $2 billion by 2020.

Under the state's landmark reform of its school funding system two years ago, districts receive more dollars for students who are low-income, learning English or in foster care. But districts are required to invest in increased or improved services for them.

At issue is $450 million in special education funds that L.A. Unified counted in 2013-14 as part of its existing spending on high-needs students -- a figure that helped set the amount of new required investments for them. The district has said it is only counting dollars spent on special education students who are also low-income, learning English or in foster care -- all told, 79% of them.

But John Affeldt of Public Advocates Inc., one of three organizations that filed the suit, said that money is being spent on special education needs -- not primarily to help students overcome learning challenges based on language, income or foster placement, as required by state law. He said L.A. Unified appears to be the only major school district in California counting special education funds in this way and that it has artifically inflated its current spending on needy students, lowering the additional amount that will be required.

"L.A. Unified is clearly violating the rules, and when L.A. violates rules the impact is felt in a very large way," Affeldt said. "That's undercutting the heart" of the law.

District officials said they were "disappointed" by the lawsuit, saying its allegations were based on a misinterpretation of the funding law.

"The Legislature clearly granted school districts -- which serve predominantly low-income students, foster youth and English language learners -- the highest degree of flexibility in determining student program needs," a district statement said. "We are confident that the District will be vindicated in this litigation. More importantly, we stand by our continuing commitment to serve our most disadvantaged students."

The plaintiffs, Community Coalition of South Los Angeles and Reyna Frias, a parent, are also suing Los Angeles County Supt. of Schools Arturo Delgado. In a letter last September, Delgado approved the district's accounting methods. County education officials declined to comment.

In addition to San Francisco-based Public Advocates, the lawsuit was also filed by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Covington & Burling law firm of San Francisco. The lawsuit asks that L.A. Unified immediately recalculate its spending and increase funding for the targeted students.

"LAUSD is breaking its promise to provide my children and millions of other students in the future, with the services they need and the law says they should receive," Frias, mother of two students in district schools, said in a statement.

By: Teresa Watanabe
Via: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lausd-funding-lawsuit-20150701-story.html

Brown, Chiang sued for diverting $369 million in mortgage money

Gov. Jerry Brown and Controller John Chiang unlawfully redirected $369 million in homeowner relief secured by Attorney General Kamala Harris, according to a lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court on Friday morning.

A coalition of Latino and African-American faith groups and an Asian-American home counseling organization brought the suit, demanding that California send millions to homeowners trying to stave off foreclosure.

"To this day, countless California victims of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis and their supporters are waiting to receive any benefit, much less the full benefit, of the settlement the Attorney General obtained for the State of California as compensation for the harms
the victims suffered and continue to suffer," the lawsuit reads.

The plaintiffs are represented by Neil Barofsky, who achieved prominence as the Treasury Department's inspector general policing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which bailed out the spiraling banking industry.

Harris in 2012 was instrumental in extracting a landmark $25 billion settlement from banks related to the predatory lending practices that helped fuel the housing market's collapse in 2007. Struggling homeowners were supposed to get financial relief from the deal, but the lawsuit filed today demands that Brown repay millions diverted to plug budget gaps.

"The frontline victims of the crisis, struggling homeowners, received mostly unfulfilled promises they would get the help they desperately needed," Barofsky said during a press conference.

As California struggled for ways to balance its books through years of recession-crippled revenue, borrowing from other funds became a common stopgap. The budget lawmakers passed and Brown signed in 2012 transferred $410 million out of the mortgage settlement account.

"The Governor had no legal right to divert these funds in the first place and, even if he did, he certainly has the statutory duty to replenish them in this year of surplus," reads the lawsuit.

A spokesman for the California Department of Finance defended reallocating the money.
"While we haven't yet seen the complaint, we're confident that our budget actions are legally sound," H.D. Palmer said in an emailed statement.

The budget maneuver was controversial. Harris herself opposed using the money to cover a budget deficit, saying in a statement at the time that "While the state is undeniably facing a difficult budget gap, these funds should be used to help Californians stay in their homes."

The Legislative Analyst's Office, in contrast, supported the move.

In announcing the lawsuit, National Asian American Coalition general counsel Robert Gnaizda praised Harris for having done "an outstanding job for the homeowners" but said Brown undercut the settlement's purpose, faulting the "slow and often inadequate pace of homeowner relief."

The lawsuit asks for the money to be channeled back into a special fund that Harris would then administer. Gnaizda said Harris has so far declined to meet with the plaintiffs but that they would seek to meet with the attorney general to "see how she can play a role in expediting" the payments to homeowners.

PHOTO: A foreclosed home in the Oak Park neighborhood October 18, 2008. The Sacramento Bee/Autumn Cruz.

Californians sentenced under realignment have the right to vote, argue civil rights advocates

Today’s lawsuit asks the Court of Appeal to clarify the voting rights of more than 85,000 Californians in time to allow them to register before Oct. 22 deadline

San Francisco – Three organizations concerned with voting rights have filed a lawsuit in the First District Court of Appeal today to clarify that people who have been sentenced for low-level, non-violent offenses under the state’s historic reform of criminal justice known as Realignment are entitled to vote in the 2012 elections and beyond.

Petitioners in the case are All of Us or None, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and the League of Women Voters of California, three organizations committed to voting rights and reintegration of people with convictions, as well as a woman confined in San Francisco jail for a narcotics conviction who wishes to vote. Secretary of State Debra Bowen and San Francisco Director of Elections John Arntz are named as respondents.

At the center of the lawsuit is a 2006 ruling (League of Women Voters vs. McPherson) in which the same court clarified that people who are confined in county jail as a condition of felony probation are entitled to vote under California law. Individuals sentenced to county jail under Realignment are not “in state prison” or “on parole” as required by McPherson. The organizations that brought McPherson have returned to the Court of Appeal to protect the voting rights of people living in their communities, in county jails or under probation-like supervision, following Realignment.

In December, Secretary Bowen issued a memorandum (#11134) to all county clerks and registrars stating that none of the individuals sentenced under Realignment are eligible to vote. But according to the McPherson ruling, the California Constitution deprives individuals of the right to vote on the basis of criminal convictions only if they are “imprisoned in state prison” or “on parole as a result of the conviction of a felony.”

Petitioners are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Social Justice Law Project, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, A New Way of Life Reentry Project, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and the Law Office of Robert Rubin. Petitioners argue that excluding Californians with criminal convictions from voting is at odds with the California Constitution and contradicts a central purpose of Realignment, which is to stop the state’s expensive revolving door of incarceration by rehabilitating and reintegrating individuals back into society.

Jory Steele, managing attorney of the ACLU of Northern California, explained that the suit seeks an order allowing Californians statewide to register for the November elections. “California’s courts have a proud tradition of protecting our fundamental right to vote. Here, this is particularly important because disenfranchisement has such a disproportionate impact on people of color.”

“We are trying to intervene and hold offenders accountable, to ask them to step up to be productive, responsive citizens,” explains Santa Cruz County’s Chief Probation Officer Scott McDonald. “Reintegration can’t just be about punishment. It’s also about taking responsibility and participating fully in the community. Voting encourages literacy and positive civic engagement. It reinforces the goals of re-entry.”

“Being deprived of the right to vote is civil death,” said Joe Paul, who coordinates a re-entry program that focuses on workforce development and life skills in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the Department of Corrections. “To reintegrate, you need to exercise the rights of citizenship - to get a job, to serve on a jury, to vote. For democracy to work, especially in the inner city, everybody needs to be a part of the franchise. If we are not inclusive, we cannot be indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”

The people who will now be in their communities following implementation of Realignment are men and women whose offenses are neither violent nor serious. They include, for example, people who have forged a train ticket, possessed morphine, taken items from an empty building during an emergency, received stolen metal from a junk dealer, or counterfeited a driver’s license.

“When I cast my vote, I feel a sense of collective power. Everyone should have the opportunity to do that,” says Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a successful re-entry program emphasizing leadership development for women and girls based in South Central Los Angeles.