Legal Aid leaders sound alarm over San Francisco budget cuts

As San Francisco tries to close a $1 billion budget deficit, proposed city cuts to civil legal aid are drawing fierce opposition from nonprofit leaders, who warn the reductions will gut essential services, increase homelessness and cripple pro bono legal efforts citywide.

"We encourage the entire law profession, every lawyer that works in San Francisco or lives in San Francisco, to contact their local officials and protest this proposed cut," Adrian Tirtanadi, executive director at legal aid organization Open Door Legal, said in a phone interview Friday.

Open Door Legal is facing a $2.2 million funding cut, about a third of its total revenue. If enacted, these cuts will force the organization to close offices, lay off staff and serve 900 fewer clients per year, Tirtanadi said.

Anne Stanley, communications manager for the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, said in an emailed statement, "Our city faces a $1 billion budget deficit, and we must make structural changes so we can get back to investing in San Francisco again.

"In line with the budget instructions issued initially last fall, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development had to make difficult decisions but will continue to work closely with all of our partners to make sure communities across the city have access to the resources they need."

Tirtanadi said his organization had research that showed the cuts would increase homelessness in the city by 4% and that the city would spend "ten times more" than the cuts to legal aid on shelter and emergency services.

The funding reductions specifically target "general civil legal services," which include assistance with informal evictions, wage theft, family law disputes, and elder law. The cuts do not affect legal aid for formal evictions, immigration, or gender-based violence cases, which are protected under Proposition F passed in 2018, according to the city's draft budget documents.

The total amount of cuts to be made by the city is unclear but at least seven legal aid organizations face cuts. One of them, the Bar Association of San Francisco's Justice & Diversity Center, will see $650,000 in cuts which would eliminate three programs, according to its granting contracts manager William Ryland.

One of the programs slated for elimination is the Tenant Advocacy Project. Its supervising attorney, Daniel P. Beaver--who previously ran his own practice in Walnut Creek for 22 years--said the cuts would hinder attorney training in the city and significantly reduce the amount of pro bono legal work available to tenants.

"The program has trained hundreds of attorneys on basic landlord-tenant law and in particular how to advocate for tenants," Beaver said in a phone interview Friday. "Agencies like us provide a conduit for attorneys to fulfill their pro bono requirement. It's definitely going to hurt the ability of lawyers to provide pro bono representation.

"It doesn't just happen. We go out there and we present to the larger firms and recruit volunteer attorneys from the larger firms. It's going to make it harder for the pro bono directors to find ways for attorneys to fulfill their pro bono requirement," he said.

The State Bar of California does not require attorneys to complete any number of pro bono hours, but it encourages them to provide at least 50 hours of pro bono services per year. The State Bar recently asked attorneys to report their pro bono hours, with a goal of introducing mandatory reporting next year.