Inner City Law Center is pleased to announce a groundbreaking program that offers legal assistance, social worker services, and rental assistance to prevent families from becoming homeless. The program will help tenants in rental housing who have lost their jobs, had their salaries cut, lost their health insurance, or face other financial difficulties that put them at risk of homelessness.

According to ICLC’s staff attorney in charge of the project, Javier Beltran: “This exciting new program will allow us to assist low-income families more holistically than in the past. In these difficult economic times, so many low-income tenants in Los Angeles are just one crisis away from losing their homes. This program will enable us and our partners to keep these families in their homes and off the streets.”

This three-year, $10 million program, paid for from a grant awarded by the City of Los Angeles from federal stimulus funds, is the first of its kind in Los Angeles. ICLC and its legal services partners, LAFLA and NLS, will provide legal services to prevent eviction and negotiate with landlords to keep families in their homes. ICLC will partner with Lamp Community to provide tenants with job training and job placement counseling, financial and budget counseling, assessment for health, income and other government benefits, and other services that will help the tenants to get their lives back on track. The program launched November 2, 2009.