Western Center on Law and Poverty
Fighting to End Poverty in California
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Although California has one of the strongest economies in the country, this stands in stark contrast with the conditions in which millions of residents live as they struggle to pay for food, shelter, and other necessities, even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Western Center serves the more than 7 million low-income Californians living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level, or $33,125 for a family of 4. By leveraging our existing model that focuses on litigation, legislation, and support for legal aid partners, we successfully fight for broad legal victories that impact California families living in poverty in the areas of housing, health, public benefits, and access to justice.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Health
Western Center's health team ensures equitable access to affordable, comprehensive, quality health care for poor consumers.
Housing
Western Center’s Housing Team advances and enforces the right of low-income (under 50% of area median) Californians to live in housing that is safe, decent, and affordable.
Financial Security
Western Center advances and enforces the rights of poor Californians receiving federal and/or state funded public benefits, including cash assistance through General Assistance/General Relief, CalWORKs and the Food Stamp Program (CalFresh) and, to prevent dependency and on public benefit programs, increases access to jobs and justice for the poorest Californians.
Access to Justice
Western Center works to expand access to justice by ensuring that Californians with low incomes are treated fairly when they engage with criminal or civil courts and that are not burdened with unjust fines and fees and/or predatory collections practices.
Where we work
Awards
Shattuck-Price Award 2012
Los Angeles County Bar Association
Advocate of the Year Award 2012
California Mental Health Advocates for Children and Youth
Wellstone – Wheeler National Anti-hunger Advocate of the Year Award 2012
National Food Research and Action Center
Kutak-Dodds 2015
National Legal Aid and Defender Association
External reviews

Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of community events or trainings held and attendance
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Western Center conducts trainings for our organizational partners in our program areas
Number of research or policy analysis products developed, e.g., reports, briefs
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Western Center publishes resources for advocates on our program areas
Number of civil litigation matters handled
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Number of organizations accessing technical assistance offerings
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Western Center's attorneys and advocates provide help to local organizations and offers trainings, develops publications and provides one-to-one technical assistance sessions.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our team works tirelessly to make sure Californians are protected in California law by addressing the following:
HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS
We will ensure that residents have access to healthy, sustainable, and affordable housing in neighborhoods of their choosing, and we advocate for strong, clear, and enforceable anti-displacement protections. All of our work seeks to address California’s housing crisis and its disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable Californians and unhoused individuals by:
Focusing on tenant protections so families stay housed during and after the pandemic, and that
they are not burdened with debt accrued through no fault of their own.
Enforcing fair housing to protect vulnerable communities from harassment and discrimination in housing.
Prioritizing land use and environmental justice and ensuring that California focuses on equitable development in healthy communities free from pollution and other environmental dangers.
Helping to prevent and end homelessness through cross-team and cross-issue initiatives such as increasing housing opportunities and funding for unhoused communities, including formerly incarcerated, veterans, LGBTQ people, and elderly individuals.
HEALTH CARE
At Western Center, we believe access to health care is a human right. We work with our community partners and government agencies to provide equitable access to health care for all Californians, especially during this unprecedented health crisis. This includes ensuring no one is removed from coverage, and for those who are, coverage is immediately restored. Our priorities include:
Expanding Medi-Cal to cover all Californians who need it and ensuring that Medi-Cal plans and providers deliver equitable, quality care.
Advocating for improvements to health programs that serve Californians with low incomes, particularly addressing health disparities for Black and Latinx communities.
Enforcing health consumer rights and protections.
FINANCIAL SECURITY AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE
We will provide a roadmap to financial security for the people who need it most, and fight for all California families to have sufficient income to afford basic necessities. This includes:
Increasing enrollment and retention, and where applicable, benefit levels across all safety net programs that serve low-income Californians such as California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs), CalFresh, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Securing or expanding CalFresh emergency food programs and pandemic food programs to relieve the continued and historic levels of hunger due to COVID-19.
Expanding programs like the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC) to allow low-income families to keep the money they earn.
Fighting to end the high costs of poverty by reducing or eliminating high fees, fines, and costs associated with the criminal justice system, traffic courts, parking tickets, and towing of cars.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
By applying a coordinated concert of tools including legislative and policy advocacy, high impact litigation, administrative advocacy, and technical assistance and education for legal service and community-based organizations to each of our priority areas, Western Center ensures that low-income Californians receive the support they are entitled to, and fights for them to keep the precious assets they do have. Our tools include:
Administrative Advocacy: Western Center works with county, city, and state administrators to ensure policies and procedures are implemented properly across California to protect and uplift Californians living in poverty. Sometimes a simple shift in procedure, or guidance and encouragement from our advocates, can make a difference in real life outcomes for hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Budget Advocacy: While budget advocacy often proceeds quietly, its impact on individuals and families can be far reaching and life changing. Western Center’s advocacy pushes the state to use its budget to bring California closer to true economic and racial equity.
Impact Litigation: Western Center files litigation across California to ensure the laws to protect and support Californians with low incomes — laws we often sponsor in Sacramento — are upheld by government and private entities. Good laws mean nothing without enforcement.
Policy Advocacy: Western Center’s state policy work centers on advancing legislation that gets to the heart of the issues causing California’s massive income inequality, unsustainable housing market, lack of access to health care, and destructive systems of justice.
Technical Assistance: Western Center attorneys and advocates assist hundreds of legal services and community-based advocates throughout the state and nation. Community-based advocates and legal aid attorneys are often the only line of defense for people with low incomes when they are forced to navigate complex legal issues. In that way, Western Center’s support of and collaboration with local advocates and legal aid attorneys ripples across communities we all serve.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Western Center was formed by a passionate group of attorneys and legal scholars who sought to create a unique organization, driven by the belief that all Californians deserve the finest possible legal representation before the institutions that shape their lives.
Western Center was founded in 1967 and is a 501(c)(3) organization with offices in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Oakland. Our operating budget for 2023 is $6.5M and our diverse revenue model includes grants and contracts, individual and corporate contributions, event revenue, attorneys' fees and cy pres awards to ensure access to services and entitlements for more than eight million Californians living in poverty each year. Our supporters include regional and national funders, such as the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Stupski Foundation, California Health Care Foundation, Blue Shield of California FoundationThe California Wellness Foundation, and The California Endowment. Western Center also values building on its current endowment as a means to provide financial sustainability for the organization.
Our 31 staff members, community and legal services partners and pro bono attorneys serve all 58 counties in the state, focusing on low-income Californians living at or below 125% of the federal poverty level. Western Center's issue teams of health care, housing and public benefits include 14 attorneys and advocates with leadership and advice provided by our executive director, an active member of the California bar, director of litigation, special counsel and general counsel. Our 40-member Board is drawn from industries including law, finance, health care academia and the nonprofit sector.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In 2022 we achieved the following:
Our impact litigation yielded significant wins to keep Californians housed and food secure. In Warren v. the City of Chico, we won a preliminary injunction where the city agreed to build individual shelters for unhoused residents and people can no longer be arrested or cited for sleeping outside when shelter is unavailable. We secured a preliminary statewide injunction in Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action and Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) v. California Housing and Community Development, pausing emergency rental assistance application denials until the program can meet constitutional standards of due process. We also secured a permanent injunction in Hunger Action Los Angeles, et al. v. County of Los Angeles, et al., requiring the county to process and approve emergency CalFresh food applications within 3 days.
Our lawsuits filed in 2022 include Guardianship of Espinoza, which attempts to establish a right to counsel in probate guardianship hearings and Tesfai v. Dept. of Health Care Services challenging the practice of denying replacement prosthetics to Medi-Cal Dental beneficiaries under conditions more restrictive than the governing statute allows. Additionally, we filed an appeal in Abney v. Dept. of Health Care Services, seeking to reverse a superior court decision in a case about Medi-Cal eligibility and its "available" income regulation.
Thirteen of our co-sponsored bills were signed into law, including groundbreaking legislation like SB 972, modernizing street vending licensing and SB 923, a first in nation bill on gender affirming health care. Our administrative and budget advocacy resulted in Medi-Cal expansions for immigrants of all ages, seniors, and persons with disabilities and the largest increase in CalWORKs cash assistance grants since the program's inception in 1998.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Western Center on Law and Poverty
Board of directorsas of 12/06/2023
Ms. Lois D. Thompson
Proskauer Rose LLP
Term: 2019 - 2023
Mr. David Elson
Law Offices of David Elson
Term: 2014 - 2023
Alex Beroukhim
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP
Shane Brun
King & Spalding LLP
Corinna Cherian
City National Bank
Grant A Davis-Denny
Munger Tolles & Olson LLP
Daralyn Durie
Durie Tangri
Kirk Dillman
McKool Smith Hennigan, P.C
David Elson
Law Offices of David Elson
David E Fink
Venable LLP
Christine Goodman
Pepperdine School of Law
Jonathan Gottlieb
Fox Legal Group
Joshua Hamilton
Latham & Watkins LLP
Michael Hostettler
Deloitte
Olivia Kim
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati P.C
Susan Leader
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Thomas Loran
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Jessica L Lunney
Adam Paris
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
Alison L Plessman
Hueston Hennigan LLP
Sylvia Rivera
American Honda Motors Co.
Rey M Rodriguez
The Walt Disney Company
Mike Shipley
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Steven G Sklaver
Susman Godfrey LLP
Patrick J Somers
Kendall Brill & Kelly LLP
Howard J Steinberg
Greenberg Traurig LLP
Lois M Takahashi
USC Price School of Public Policy
Lois D Thompson
Proskauer Rose LLP
Dale Walls
Elizabeth Butler Steyer
Felicia Davis
Paul Hastings LLP
Leif King
Baker & McKenzie LLP
Shira Liu
Crowell & Moring LLP
Patrick J. Somers
Kendall Brill Kelly LLP
Erin Brady
Hogan Lovells LLP
Duane Campbell
FTI Consulting
Brian Cardoza
Southern California Edison
Julia Cherlow
Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks, Lincenberg & Rhow, P.C.
Maisie Chen
Megan Ebor
San Diego State University
Diana Feinstein
Gibson Dunn Crutcher LLP
Marisol Franco
Jocelyn Freeman Garrick
John S Gibson
DLA Piper LLP
Jaelyn Edwards Judelson
Akin Gump
Madhu Pocha
O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Connie Chan Robinson
Diane Baquet Smith
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
Abraham Tabaie
Skadden Arps
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 02/02/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We disaggregate data by demographics, including race, in every policy and program measured.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.