In 2015, Endia Cleveland – an Oakland native and mother – was hopeful that she and her family would soon have a new apartment to call home. She submitted more than 10 applications but was denied without explanation.
After Dequan was charged with battery at age 13, he and his mother were unable to pay $200 in court and public defender fees, which extended his probation by more than a year.
Through this lawsuit I hope to bring the Lacayos to justice for their exploitation of immigrants in San Francisco and to prevent any other immigrants from becoming victims of their fraudulent operation. I want to thank the International Institute of the Bay Area, La Raza Centro Legal, East Bay Community Law Center, Dolores Street Community Services, Immigration Legal Resource Center, the State Bar of California, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review for helping us prepare our legal case.
Laura Lane, director of the housing practice at the East Bay Community Law Center, said the nonprofit was contacted by the tenants with concerns about conditions at the property earlier this year. She said the law center successfully defended a tenant who had withheld his rent in protest and was facing eviction.
Thousands of low-income Alameda County families will no longer pay juvenile probation and public defender fees. On July 12, 2016 the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to end the assessment and collection on all fees charged to parents and guardians with children in the juvenile justice system. The repeal, which is the first of its kind in the state, ends all fee assessment and collection, offering immediate relief to more than 2,900 families with outstanding debt and shielding thousands of families who pass through Alameda’s juvenile courts every year from future financial hardship.
In California, where you live may help determine whether your license is suspended or you land in jail over unpaid traffic tickets.
A new study found a wide disparity between rates of drivers from high-poverty, Black and Latino neighborhoods losing their licenses or getting arrested over traffic fines, fees, or failure to appear in court, and rates among drivers from wealthier zip codes.
A months-long effort to evict a quadriplegic senior from his South Berkeley apartment is over, after the management company apparently gave up. “Your eviction lawsuit is finally over,” attorney Meghan Gordon of the East Bay Community Law Center told tenant Michael Pachovas in a letter this month. “I will be closing your case at EBCLC because this matter has been settled,” she added.
Driving while black in California can be expensive, especially if you are poor.
A disproportionate share of fees, fines, and license suspensions fall on blacks and Latinos.
