What We Do
A variety of housing legal services are offered through Housing Resource Centers (HRCs). HRCs are the places in Alameda County where the major activities of the Coordinated Entry System happen. Coordinated Entry is a standardized method to connect people experiencing homelessness to the resources available in a community. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that every community operate a Coordinated Entry System that assesses and prioritizes people experiencing homelessness for programs and assistance within the region dedicated to meeting the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
AC Care Connect has contracted with Bay Area Legal Aid to provide the following housing legal services:
- Operating a countywide Legal Call Center (Tenant's Rights Line) to triage legal issues as they relate to housing.
- Developing and delivering housing legal workshops in five regions of Alameda County in partnership with regional Housing Resource Centers and the countywide Housing Education and Counseling services provider (Bay Area Community Services)
- Providing legal representation, brief services, and advice and counsel for specific qualified and prioritized Alameda County Care Connect clients
In addition, AC Care Connect has contracted with Eden I&R to provide a countywide Call Center by dialing 2-1-1. This is a primary way many persons experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness first contact the coordinated system and are screened and referred for further assessment and services. The Call Center is staffed with trained operators able to screen, triage, and problem solve with callers, make referrals to mainstream resources, send appropriate callers to the corresponding Housing Resource Center to get assistance, and provide information to callers related to filing grievances on behalf of the system.
Who We Serve
Housing Legal Workshops and the Tenant’s Rights Line are accessible to the public and are geared toward assisting anyone in Alameda County who is literally homeless or experiencing a housing crisis.
Households eligible to receive individual housing legal services (legal representation, brief services, and advice and counsel) must:
- be living in Alameda County; AND
- enrolled in or eligible for Medi-Cal; AND
- have agreed to enrollment in AC Care Connect; AND
- be literally homeless (HUD homeless definition) or have been literally homeless in the last 24 months
How We Impact
Through the provision of legal services described above, AC Care Connect works to prevent and end homelessness by:
- Helping Medi-Cal enrolled and eligible beneficiaries that are homeless or at-risk of homelessness obtain and maintain permanent housing in the community
- Improving Alameda County Care Connect client outcomes by connecting housing with other critical service systems through regional Housing Resource Centers and other service providers, and participation in countywide data-sharing and care coordination
- Reserving more costly and adversarial legal interventions for situations in which low-cost mediation and conflict resolution strategies prove ineffective in meeting the needs of the clients
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