The Tenants’ Rights Workshop helps empower tenants in Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda to assert their right to safe and secure housing. During weekly clinics, students receive substantive training, then interview clients and work one-on-one with staff attorneys from the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) to provide advice and limited legal services. Issues include habitability, harassment, lease interpretation, subsidized housing, and general rights advising. Follow-up work often includes students drafting letters to landlords about the tenants’ housing issues. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated housing insecurity and further destabilized economic and social frameworks that tenants rely on. With the recent lifting of the eviction moratorium and rent protection we’ve seen an increase in the many issues that tenants face and want to continue to be responsive to that need.
Tenants’ Rights Workshop will provide client services virtually while fellow students work together in-person with our supervising attorneys at the law school. Clients have appreciated the increased flexibility that working remotely provides them, and remote provision of legal services has made TRW’s work more accessible to a greater number of clients.
TRW has the goal of connecting clients with high quality legal advice while teaching law students how to interview clients, how to spot legal issues in a real-world setting, and how to efficiently serve both attorney supervisors and clients. This SLP works on housing issues, but these skills are applicable in many client-facing situations. We know that asking for three hours a week for the full academic year is a commitment, and we hope to make this experience as valuable for students as possible. If there is a week that you anticipate having to miss, we just ask that you provide co-leads with adequate notice.
Supervision: Students in the Tenants’ Rights Workshop provide legal services under the supervision of attorneys at the East Bay Community Law Center.
Time Commitment: Three hours per week every Friday from 1:30pm–4:30pm.
For more information, please contact the student leaders at trw@law.berkeley.edu.