STAY HOUSED LA OFFERS FREE LEGAL HELP TO PROTECT LA RENTERS FROM EVICTION & PREVENT HOMELESSNESS
Tenant protections vary in the Southeast Cities and across LA County, but Stay Housed LA workshops help renters know their rights
BELL GARDENS, CA Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025 — Today Stay Housed LA attorneys and community partners helped more than 40 renters and their families in Southeast LA facing eviction, harassment, and rent hikes understand their rights and resources to help them stay in their homes.
At a tenant rights workshop at Veterans Park in Bell Gardens, Stay Housed LA member Jasmine Gonzalez of Eastyard Communities for Environmental Justice presented an overview of renter protections across LA County, followed by one-on-one consultations from nearly a dozen attorneys and legal staff.
“These experiences can be very stressful, but as you start to understand your rights, you’ll find out how you can defend yourself,” said Gonzalez, whose presentation covered the renter protections available in cities across LA County, including restrictions on rent increases, and how to access free legal help and resources to advocate for yourself.
“We all have a right to an affordable place to live,” said Lucia Veloz, a Bell Gardens resident facing eviction and harassment who has been helped by Stay Housed. “The owner of my apartment told my family we had to leave in two months, and I was terrified. I thought about my children–where are we going to go? But I went to a Stay Housed LA legal clinic and found out I have rights. If an owner wants to evict someone, they need to prove certain things, and it’s not easy to evict a family who for years has paid and taken care of the place. When my attorney eventually told us we can stay in our home, I was astonished that something good came out of this. I am so grateful.”
Some cities in LA County, including Bell Gardens, protect residents from excessive rent hikes by a Rent Stabilization Ordinance and relocation assistance programs–but not all residents are aware, and protections vary among nearby cities. In addition to the protections in their cities, workshop attendees asked about protections for mobile homes.
“Your housing rights in a mobile home depend largely on whether you own the mobile home and rent the lot, or whether you rent both the mobile home and the lot,” said Stay Housed LA attorney Natalie Knott of Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “But you do have protections, and you should seek out Stay Housed LA for help.
SHLA members are helping multiple communities of renters organize, take action and avoid eviction in the Southeast cities. In Cudahy, 90 families residing in a mobile home park received invalid termination notices for a compliance issue. The City of Cudahy has policy protections to keep them housed and SHLA is working to help them. SHLA is helping a group of Paramount mobile home residents who recently received notices of monthly rent increases of up to $500, to push that city to establish a Rent Stabilization Ordinance. The City of Bell owns land where residents have rented space for mobile homes they own for more than 20 years. SHLA is helping residents understand their rights as the city considers displacing the mobile home residents and redeveloping the land.
SHLA is a partnership between Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles with nearly 30 non-profit law firms and community-based organizations. As costs-of-living skyrocket, family budgets tighten and the LA housing crisis persists, renters across LA County can access help from Stay Housed LA to understand their rights and the resources available to protect them from illegal evictions and rent hikes. Renters can access help at www.stayhousedla.org.
Over the past five years, SHLA has supported more than 30,000 tenants with legal services, represented 10,000 tenants in court—with a 90% success rate—and educated and empowered 2.3 million renters about their rights through phone calls, texts, door-to-door outreach, and workshops like the upcoming event.
SHLA is made possible in part by the work of the Right to Counsel coalition. As the federal funds supporting this work in L.A. County runs out, an allocation of Measure A funding from the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority (LACAHSA) will be necessary to help tenants access legal support and resources to stay in their homes.
