Public Counsel relies on funding from CREDO Mobile to deliver justice for all

Everyone deserves equal access to justice. Public Counsel is a nonprofit public-interest law firm that provides it. That’s why we support Public Counsel and recently sent a significant grant to the group.

Public Counsel engages with communities and clients to create a more just society through legal services, advocacy and civil rights litigation. Working on a pro bono basis, primarily in the Los Angeles area, Public Counsel staff and volunteers seek justice through direct legal services. They promote healthy and resilient communities through education and outreach, and they support community-led efforts to transform unjust systems through litigation and policy advocacy.

Public Counsel envisions an equitable society in which people thrive, with systems and laws that bring justice to all. It operates a number of separate projects to achieve that goal. These include its Gender Justice Project, Center for Veterans’ Advancement, Children’s Rights Project, Consumer Rights and Economic Justice, and the Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Public Counsel’s core beliefs advance the cause of a more just society

Every day, Public Counsel delivers justice to those who need it most, guided by the following strategies and values.

• Coordinated advocacy: Public Counsel’s direct legal work informs, complements and is amplified by its impact litigation, policy advocacy, and community education and outreach efforts.
• Mobilization: It proactively recruits and mobilizes volunteers from a wide array of professions, organizations, sectors and communities to join in the fight for equal justice.
• Accountability: It is accountable to its clients, focusing on their needs and goals when providing legal representation and services.
• Power building: It aims to align its legal advocacy with durable grassroots movements to build power, change unjust laws and achieve lasting results.
• Results: Public Counsel gets results through relentless, bold and creative advocacy and leadership that place its legal services within a broader set of strategies and tactics.
• Equity: It advances racial and economic justice by advocating for legal and policy reforms, and by providing lower-income clients and clients in communities of color with access to quality legal representation.
• Respect: Public Counsel respects the unique experiences of everyone with whom it engages. Its work is empathetic, trauma-informed and strengths-based.

CREDO Mobile funding supports expanded Public Counsel efforts

Public Counsel is using our grant to strengthen and expand its programs on a number of fronts. It recently participated in a community teach-in about commercial tenant protections. It took in a new cohort of social-work interns. It partnered with the Los Angeles County Office for the Advancement of Early Care and Education to launch an important new resource called Child Care for All: Information for Child Care Providers on Expanding Infant and Toddler Care in Los Angeles County. It joined partner organizations to submit 400,000 signatures to place the Affordable Housing, Homelessness Solutions and Prevention Now Measure on L.A. County’s November ballot. And it released a new manual designed to help parents, caregivers and community members advocate for students with disabilities.

Together, CREDO Mobile and Public Counsel are making a difference

In recent months, Public Counsel joined with unhoused veterans with disabilities to sue the Department of Housing and Urban Development and force a major policy change by HUD that will allow the most disabled veterans with the greatest need to qualify for affordable housing.

It worked with local street vendors to reach a groundbreaking settlement with Los Angeles to repeal the city’s exclusionary vending bans near swap meets, farmers’ markets, schools and temporary events, and bring an end to the city’s policy of banning, ticketing and harassing street vendors. Street vending is a vibrant part of California culture and is protected by state law. It provides flexible jobs that enliven streets, encourage walkability and social activity, and bolster neighborhood safety by adding eyes and ears to the streets and strengthening community connections.

Public Counsel partnered with thousands of homeowners to obtain a $12 million settlement for the homeowners, who were victimized by predatory loans from clean energy vendors. The loans were meant to help homeowners finance installation of renewable energy systems like solar panels but left hundreds of homeowners facing unaffordable payments and property liens. The settlement enables homeowners, many of them low-income and elderly, to get relief from those payments and liens.

If you’re a CREDO Mobile customer, thank you for helping Public Counsel win these victories and many more. If you’re not a customer, please consider joining now. You’ll get all you want from a phone company: the nation’s top-rated network, competitive plans and great deals on new devices.

And you’ll get much more. You’ll get an easy, effective way to make a difference in the world by generating much-needed donations for progressive nonprofits dedicated to the causes you care about, like justice, human rights, economic equality and climate action.

To learn more about the critical work Public Counsel does, go to PublicCounsel.org.