Executive Director, Bruce Iwasaki

California Needs to Invest in Equal Access to Justice

May 2001

The definition of meeting the basic needs of the working poor in California must be broadened. It often is assumed that if the basic needs of low-income people are met by supplying food and shelter, that is enough.

But living in a complex bureaucracy such as ours also means folks need legal help. One out of four low-income families in Los Angeles County, for instance, will need legal assistance sometime during the year.

The big problems that face Californians range from rolling blackouts to an economic downturn. We expect our elected officials, and public and private partnerships to deal with these matters. But everyday at the neighborhood level, seniors are scammed by home loan fraud artists, tenants are rent gouged and illegally evicted, and the disabled are denied their benefits.

Access to justice is essential in meeting people's primary needs. The rifts in our cities deepen when the scales of justice appear out of kilter. In the instances of high-profile cases like Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs or Anna Nicole Smith, many come to the conclusion that celebrity equals money equals justice. In a March 5 Los Angeles Times poll, 46 percent believed L.A. as a whole was heading in the "right direction" and 36 percent stated "things were on the wrong track."

When institutions and scheming individuals victimize the average Jane and Joe, they feel there is nowhere to turn for help. When this happens, when they doubt that the system can work for them, it's no wonder they feel civic involvement is futile.

The decline of community engagement is particularly worrisome in Los Angeles, a city of immense and conspicuous wealth and with the highest concentration of poor people, over two million, of any metropolitan area of the country.

It is true that we need to invest in affordable housing, not for charity but to sustain our economic growth. We also need reliable public transportation, effective job training, and better schools for the same reason.

But the need to invest in equal justice is just as urgent. We must take affirmative steps to ensure that public institutions are viewed as fair, and that the forums for resolving disputes be open to all.

Legal service advocates for the poor struggle to make justice work but cannot meet the full need. Everyday, senior citizens have their homes stolen out from under them by unscrupulous contractors. Dishwashers, garment workers, and car wash employees are also cheated of the wages the law guarantees daily.

Families struggling to move from welfare to self-sufficiency face a Byzantine system that discourages education and hinders their efforts to travel to work and secure childcare. The housing shortage in Los Angeles is so severe that landlords can charge rents it would take a minimum wage worker three fulltime jobs to afford.

Municipal agencies should join with legal aid groups to enforce housing standards, crack down on scams that target immigrants, and encourage ways to give people the tools to sustaining themselves.

Schools should work with public interest lawyers to teach students and their parents their rights and responsibilities, and where they can go for help. Courts can work with legal aid to simplify forms and procedures, recruit volunteer private lawyers and ensure that clients who represent themselves get a fair hearing. And local governments must allocate funds to support equal access to the judicial system, to foster the orderly resolution of disputes.

To promulgate hope and a belief that things are going in the right direction, we need to establish and expand a broader community for equal justice.

A modified version of this commentary originally appeared in the Tuesday, May 1, 2001 issue of the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

BGI