Low-income tenants are at risk without a city contract, housing rights advocates fear

Numerous housing rights and rent protection organizations fear that the inability to secure a stable and long-term contract with the City of Los Angeles could threaten their ability to provide services to low-income tenants facing eviction and leave many renters whom they represent without recourse. 

Since 2020, Stay Housed L.A., a coalition made up of nearly 30 nonprofit law firms and community-based organizations, has been in close partnership with both the city and county of L.A. 

The partnership was set up to prevent the massive layoffs of the COVID-19 crisis from causing a wave of evictions in one of the most housing-insecure places in the nation. 

With funding coming both from the city and county, the community-based organizations have provided free legal services to eligible tenants facing eviction and ensured tenants are fairly represented in court.

But today, five years later, the coalition says they feel limited due to the uncertainty they will face when a temporary contract extension comes to an end on March 31, 2026. 

Background

As Barbara Schultz, director of housing justice at the Legal Aid Foundation of L.A., the lead contractor for Stay Housed L.A., explained, the Stay Housed L.A. coalition renews their contract with the city every year, but earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Karen Bass approved a five-year renewal of the contract between Stay Housed L.A. and the City of Los Angeles. This contract was stopped and rejected by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto in June of this year. 

“In May, the L.A. City Council approved a five-year contract and the mayor signed it. We believed we were about to go into a five-year contract, but just a couple of weeks before our contract was to end on June 30, we learned the city attorney told the housing department she was not going to approve the contract,” Schultz said. “We were in a bit of a panic.” 

Feldstein Soto previously said she refused to sign the $34 million extension contract because she viewed awarding it as a sole-source contract as violating the city’s charter. 

Shortly after, Feldstein Soto proposed a seven-month contract extension and launched an audit of LAFLA, stating that her office was “reviewing this sole source contract to determine the extent to which funds paid by the city to LAFLA have served their intended and stated purposes and benefited tenants of L.A.”

Today

In September, the city’s Housing Department put out a request for submissions for a new contract, but since then, city officials have recently announced the department “has determined a need” to postpone the submission deadline for the new contract.

Schultz said they did not provide a reason for the delay, and new dates have yet to be announced, leaving the coalition in limbo. 

Although obtaining a complete and official contract agreement may take longer than initially expected, last week the L.A.City Council voted to pay nearly $3.7 million to extend renter assistance funding and another $12 million to extend other Stay Houses LA services until next spring. The temporary contract extension will run through the end of March 2026. 

“We’re grateful that today’s extension allows our work to continue… but further confusion and delay will weaken our programs and harm L.A.’s renters,” Schultz said. “Short-term extensions limit our ability to staff legal services and threaten to leave renters in limbo when they come for help.”

This crisis comes at a time when families' housing stability is being threatened by the overwhelming ICE raids and the fear of showing up to work.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a rent relief program in September 2025 to assist immigrant households facing sudden loss of income due to federal enforcement actions, but Schultz said she is most concerned for the at-risk tenants in the city who are going to be looking for services in the coming weeks and months.

“We’ve been out of rental assistance for several months now and that was very unfortunate because we use that funding to settle eviction cases,” Schultz said. “It's incredibly hard to manage and implement such a large program on a month-by-month basis.

Schultz told CALÓ News the coalition's hopes for a concrete long-term contract. “The interruptions to this program were completely unnecessary and the people who suffered most because of them are tenants,” she said.