A prominent San Francisco nonprofit leader is starting a hunger strike in June, in protest of a proposed budget cut that threatens to strangle civil legal services in the city.
Adrian Tirtanadi is the founder of Open Door Legal, which provides legal services for San Francisco’s low-income residents. Access to these services, Tirtanadi said, can help build a bridge out of poverty in America.
“Since people don’t have access to legal services in the U.S., hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and lost income are stolen from poor and working-class Americans every year. If we could just change that one thing about our country, it would be so much more equitable,” Tirtanadi said.
Following news of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new proposed budget, announced late May, general civil legal services in San Francisco are looking at a grim $4.2 million cut in funding. Open Door Legal stands to lose a potential $2.2 million loss in revenue, “at least” 15 staff members, one of the nonprofit’s four offices and a reduced caseload of roughly 900 fewer clients served each year.
Tirtanadi said he met with Lurie “several times” and pleaded with him not to make the cuts, which will impact six other legal aid nonprofits and target “general civil legal services,” or legal assistance outside immediate eviction threat, immigration and gender-based violence.
“I think injustice is easy to dismiss or to not fund because it’s basically invisible, right? It happens behind closed doors,” Tirtanadi said. “I think this [hunger strike] is the best way to highlight the harm, because it makes the suffering public.”
Since 2013, with the opening of the first location in the Bayview, Open Door Legal was founded with the idea that general civil legal services are the city’s “most cost-effective program at addressing poverty and homelessness.”
The nonprofit offers legal services around immigration, homelessness, housing and other civil legal issues to lower-income and vulnerable communities who may not have access to private forms of legal representation. According to a study conducted by Open Door Legal, 60% of people at risk of homelessness have general legal issues and 46% of people at risk of becoming homeless were able to stay housed because of free legal services.
Over the past 10 years, 20% of the Bayview’s population had turned to them for help, roughly five to 10 families on every block.
For years, Tirtanadi pushed himself both physically and physiologically, working 80-hour weeks after seeing how much the community benefited from Open Door Legal’s resources.
“I remember this client who broke down crying when we told her we would help her, because she had been to so many places — she had even been to, like abandoned buildings looking for legal help,” Tirtanadi said.
I remember people who had their assets stolen, their wages stolen, who got locked out of their homes by their landlord or sent into homelessness by abusers,” he continued.
Tirtanadi will begin his hunger strike on June 11 during a rally in front of City Hall with other legal aid groups and their supporters, as well as nine out of 11 supervisors.
Open Door Legal is just one nonprofit left spiraling after Lurie announced he was “doubling down” to face the city’s $800 million deficit head-on.
“A crisis of this magnitude means we cannot avoid painful decisions, and I am prepared to make those decisions,” Lurie said in a statement. “When I say core services, I am talking about police, firefighters, emergency personnel, nurses, street cleaners, Muni operators and more — all the things that keep people safe and support our long-term economic growth.”
At least one organization, the Bar Association of San Francisco’s Justice & Diversity Center, is facing elimination of all of its general civil services due to a $684,000 loss in funding.
To continue providing services, which include benefits for homeless and low-income individuals, bilingual family law services and pre-eviction tenant legal services, the organization needs a financial injection of around $880,000.
William Ryland, a granting contracts manager at the Justice and Diversity Center, called the decision to “flat out” eliminate civil legal services as a funding category a shock.
“The civil legal services in San Francisco are an ecosystem, the safety net,” Ryland said. “These services form the connective glue that makes our service system comprehensive. Without these services to fill in the gaps between the very specific and restricted services that are funded, the community will fall through the gaps.”
To learn more about how we use your information, please read our privacy policy.