WCLP educates, advocates and litigates on health, housing and public benefits issues on behalf of low-income Californians. We work closely with legal services and other community based organizations to ensure that our efforts are firmly grounded in the actual experiences of the people we strive to help. With policy advocacy, impact litigation, and technical assistance, we represent low-income people in court, before administrative agencies (such as state and local welfare and health departments) and in the California Legislature. We respond to thousands of calls every year for advice or information from community-based advocates, legal services and pro bono lawyers, health clinics, government officials and the media. We offer intensive training for advocates in housing, health care, and welfare law, and we have published numerous guides and resource materials in our areas of expertise.

Some of our recent work includes:

• Tenant's rights: We won an appellate court victory requiring cities to provide relocation assistance to tenants displaced by gentrification and to replace lost affordable units.
• Health care costs: We persuaded the Court of Appeal to order reimbursement for tens of thousands of low-income people forced to pay out of pocket for costly medical care while waiting for their Medi-Cal applications to be approved.
• New affordable housing: We worked to ensure passage by the voters of Proposition 46, the WCLP-sponsored bill to provide $2 billion in new affordable housing and homeless shelter beds.
• Reforming Los Angeles County's Foster Care System: Along with our co-counsel, we achieved an historical settlement that will transform the treatment of foster children in the country's largest foster care system. The County must take steps to place children in the most homelike setting available, minimize the number of times children are moved, and provide children with individualized mental health services. WCLP will be monitoring the implementation of this settlement for the next several years.
• Help for disabled students: We won an appellate court victory finding that the state's policy of terminating welfare to teens who won't complete high school by age 19 discriminates against students whose disabilities preclude meeting that standard.
• Fighting childhood lead poisoning: We are working to eradicate childhood lead poisoning to break the related perpetual cycle of poverty. We helped draft and garner support for the recently enacted SB 460, the most comprehensive lead poisoning prevention legislation in the country. And we are now working with community based organizations to get local governments to make low-income housing safer for children by preventing lead poisoning before it happens.
• Supporting legal aid programs: Our expert poverty lawyers respond each year to thousands of calls from local legal services advocates with research assistance, trainings, educational materials and advice, helping them provide the highest quality representation they can for their clients.