In Los Angeles, ACCE Action has an Education Chapter and a Home Defenders Chapter! We have are also organizing on the neighborhood level with chapters in City Council Districts 8, 9, 10, 15 and in communities in South LA County. From taking action to get the city and county to invest in our neighborhoods to fighting for fair housing policies and services across the city and county, LA ACCE Action members are making their voices heard!
3655 S Grand Ave, Suite 250
Los Angeles, CA 90007
213-863-4548 ext. 107
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We've long been leading the fight to save homes from foreclosures and now are deeply engaged in the fight to stop rent gouging and eviction of the long-term residents in our communities - especially tenants of corporate Wall Street landlords like Blackstone's Invitation Homes. ACCE Los Angeles has racked up several significant housing wins. ACCE leaders led the fight to amend LA’s Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance (TAHO), won tenants permanent rent control in unincorporated LA County, and successfully fought to get the county to end its controversial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program that had victimized thousands of LA homeowners. In a victory for LA County tenants, ACCE led a coalition to successfully get the Board of Supervisors to extend a countywide eviction moratorium through the end of 2022. And in a huge victory for tenants in LA City, we won permanent near-universal just cause protections and relocation assistance for tenants displaced by rent increases. We’re working to end LA’s speculative housing system by fighting for a vacancy tax on the thousands of luxury units left empty and used as second homes or pure investments.
After a fight that spanned seven years, ACCE Los Angeles finally won one of the strongest anti-tenant harassment laws in the country. Through dozens of direct actions and press conferences, hundreds of phone calls and emails to city councilmembers, and public comments at Council meetings, ACCE members worked hard to get the LA City Council to pass the first phase of TAHO passed in 2021. However, TAHO 1.0’s failure to truly protect tenants from abusive landlords immediately became apparent as there were no funds allocated for enforcement, among other weaknesses. In 2022, TAHO 2.0 was launched. The TAHO 2.0 campaign began with more direct actions against abusive landlords, and demands for the City Attorney to enforce the law. ACCE was soon joined in the fight for a stronger TAHO by the Keep LA Housed (KLAH) Coalition, and we developed seven amendments to the law that we presented to and urged Councilmembers to pass. Throughout 2024, ACCE leaders held town halls, made more phone calls and public comments to Councilmembers, and organized media events for impacted tenants to tell their stories to the press and public. And in November 2024, the Council voted 11-0 in favor of TAHO 2.0 with all seven amendments ACCE and KLAH asked for! Those changes include mandatory attorney’s fees, triple damages and prohibition on refusal to accept rent payments. The new law went into effect at the end of 2024. In 2025, ACCE will start working with impacted tenants to sue landlords and get the relief they deserve.
More than three-quarters of Los Angeles residents are renters, and the majority of those are moderately or severely rent burdened– meaning they spend 30% or more of their income on rent. Wages for LA workers simply haven’t kept up with the rising costs of housing, with the average worker needing to earn three times the county’s minimum wage to be able to afford an apartment. LA City’s current Rent Stabilization Ordinance (LARSO) formula, which limits annual rent increases for RSO units, is still too high, and favors landlords while tenants still struggle to pay. The current LARSO does nothing to relieve this burden on renters, nor does it stem the tide of evictions or prevent rising homelessness. ACCE Los Angeles is working with our allies at Keep LA Housed (KLAH) to fight to reform LARSO by calling on the City Council to update the law’s formula to mirror cities with fairer rent stabilization laws and to ensure more Angelenos stay housed.
As part of the United to House LA coalition, ACCE and partners campaigned for Measure ULA - a tax on property transfers in LA City of over $5 million to fund affordable housing, renter assistance and services for the unhoused. ACCE leaders phonebanked and canvassed across south LA talking to voters and urging them to vote in support of the initiative. These efforts paid off, with nearly 58% of voters in November 2022 approving Measure ULA. In the more than two years since its passage, Measure ULA has raised more than $318 million for programs to protect seniors, tenants and the unhoused. ACCE leaders continue to fight to keep Measure ULA funds from being diverted away to other city priorities, and instead keep those funds for the purpose they were intended- to support the United to House LA’s vision for social housing, good union jobs, tenant right to counsel, income support for low-income seniors, homeownership programs, and protections against tenant harassment.
Since becoming part of the Keep LA Housed (KLAH) and Right to Counsel coalitions, ACCE leaders have successfully helped push the LA Board of Supervisors to agree to establish a right to counsel (RTC) - the right for tenants to be granted free legal representation in eviction court. Thanks to ACCE members’ participation, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted in 2023 to establish a right to counsel for low-income tenants living in unincorporated areas of LA, and the ordinance became law at the beginning of 2025. We are now working with the RTC coalition to extend this important right to residents of the City of LA.
ACCE’s District 10 chapter and the residents of south LA’s Chesapeake Apartments fought against one of southern California’s most notorious slumlords, billionaire Mike Nijjar. For years, Chesapeake residents had been living with dilapidated and unsafe conditions at the complex owned by Nijjar and his company, PAMA Properties. The residents and ACCE leaders fought back by suing Nijjar and confronting local housing officials who were continuing to drag their feet in holding Nijjar accountable. ACCE-LA is working to pressure the LA Housing Department to improve its code enforcement program to ensure tenants can get habitability problems resolved as quickly as possible. We must ensure slumlords like Mike Nijjar can’t continue to operate their buildings with such neglect and treat tenants with disrespect.
At Maya Angelou community school, a public high school that we fought to win, we are organizing to implement a set of important community-based policies, including a strong restorative justice discipline program. We continue to organize with parents and teachers, as well as neighbors around the school, to make sure our children are getting a strong, quality education. We are also organizing with our Reclaim Our Schools Coalition to stop the forces of school privatization and improve access to a quality education for all of our children. ROSLA is fighting to increase spending to $20K per student in LA County, divestment from school policing to end the criminalization of Black and Brown pupils, increase teacher pay, and for the cancellation of rent and mortgages. In 2022, our coalition stopped the shutdown of one of south LA’s oldest schools, Trinity Elementary, and we continue fighting to keep Trinity a Community School and end its co-location with a charter. We successfully stopped the co-location of another school, 28th Street Elementary. In early 2023, ACCE leaders marched on the picket line with UTLA and SEIU during a three-day strike of teachers and school workers, the largest school strike in history. In a huge victory and after a year of negotiations for the Beyond Recovery platform developed by UTLA members, parents and community allies including ACCE, the unions won all of their demands in their contract with LAUSD, including protections for housing insecure students. To ensure all students have access to affordable housing, ACCE education leaders are bringing attention to the hundreds of empty LAUSD-owned properties, some of which were occupied by charter schools that were recently shuttered due to declining enrollment. ACCE is putting pressure on LAUSD to turn these abandoned lots into low-cost housing for students and families impacted by LA’s ongoing housing crisis. Throughout the COVID-19 emergency and now, our coalition is advocating for a racially just and equitable recovery that ensures all LAUSD students learn in a safe, healthy environment.
ACCE is part of the USC Accountability Alliance (formerly USC Forward), a coalition of tenant leaders, union members and community activists to demand the University of Southern California addresses its role in the gentrification and displacement of low-income communities following the university’s rapid expansion. In July 2020, ACCE leaders joined the Alliance for an action calling for the abolition of campus police, an end to restrictive security measures, and the university to recruit 1,000 LAUSD students annually with full scholarships. In August 2020, the Alliance, ACCE leaders, clergy, labor allies and South L.A. residents rallied to demand the L.A. City Council stop the building of a Marriott Hotel on the former Bethune Library site, and prioritize affordable housing instead. In February 2023, ACCE members rallied in support of USC shuttle bus drivers campaigning to unionize with SEIU Local 721, and the drivers eventually won that fight. In July 2024, ACCE leaders and the Alliance won a major victory when the LA City Council approved changes to South LA's Community Plan Implementation Overlay (CPIO) that will better protect tenants in South LA from the area’s rapid gentrification. To achieve this victory, ACCE leaders spent two years fighting the developer Tripalink, which has been responsible for the rapid gentrification around the University of Southern California in its drive to build expensive student housing at the expense of longtime local residents. Then in December, the City Council expanded those same protections citywide by adopting changes to the city's Resident Protection Ordinance (RPO). These protections strengthen protections for all LA residents displaced by developers demolishing older apartment complexes to make way for new development. ACCE worked with our partners at Movement Legal to draft the changes to the RPO based on the updated South LA CPIO. Finally, ACCE-LA is working with East Los Angeles community groups to hold USC accountable for the expansion of their Eastside medical campus. We are continuing to pressure and demand accountability from a city that too often takes care of wealthy neighborhoods and neglects our communities.
LA ACCE members celebrated a win in the spring of 2015 and continue to roll out victories: workers in both the city and unincorporated county areas won a raise in the minimum wage to $15, which was implemented in 2020. Our bank worker members also organized across LA in Summer 2018 to win the Responsible Banking Ordinance which requires banks to disclose any quotas of their bank-workers before contracting with the city of LA! ACCE Los Angeles just recently joined forces with UNITEHERE! Local 11 to campaign for a $25/hour minimum wage for workers in LA’s travel industry. In 2023, ACCE-LA collaborated with SEIU 721 on the Fix LA campaign to win the strongest city contract for LA workers, which included common good bargaining demands around housing.
ACCE Los Angeles’ Home Defenders chapter is organizing to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure stay in their homes. In 2020, ACCE leaders from the Home Defenders successfully fought to get the county to end its controversial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program that had victimized thousands of LA homeowners. PACE programs are enabled by state legislation that permits municipalities to offer financing for qualifying “green energy” improvements, which homeowners repay through an increase in their property taxes. But the programs are riddled with fraud, forgery, identity theft, price gouging, undisclosed costs and fees, and un-permitted and uncompleted work. In a significant victory for approximately 100 PACE victims, then City Attorney Mike Feuer announced in July 2022 a $6 million settlement to be distributed to Los Angeles homeowners harmed by the unfair deceptive and unlawful practices by Eco Solar, a company connected to the PACE program. And in another victory, more than 30 families won a settlement against Marco Mendoza, a contractor who scammed the families using PACE. In 2024, ACCE Home Defenders led an action at the Oakland headquarters of Solar Mosaic, another private lender that funded home improvement scams through various lenders. Their efforts against Solar Mosaic eventually led to the cancellation of more than 30 loans, totalling $2.4 million. Many PACE victims remain uncompensated however, and ACCE is working hard to lobby state legislators to provide a restitution fund. ACCE is now partnering with Public Counsel to provide free online clinics for homeowners seeking help.
The climate crisis is the biggest threat facing humanity– no thanks to energy companies’ addiction to burning fossil fuels, which has contributed to out of control flooding, wildfires and air pollution. Low-income communities and communities of color in Los Angeles and across the state are suffering from the impacts of fossil fuels, including disproportionately higher rates of asthma from dirty air. Wildfires that devastated parts of LA County in early 2025 have only exacerbated LA’s housing crisis as many tenants find themselves vulnerable to rampant price gouging leading to widespread evictions and displacement. ACCE Los Angeles leaders are taking on the climate crisis, beginning with working with city officials to find solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change on our communities, such as advocating for sustainable affordable housing and ensuring our communities get their fair share of federal dollars going toward energy efficiency rebates. We’ve started and are going to continue to confront the big energy corporations and their big bank investors through direct actions and demands that public pension funds end new investments in fossil fuel companies.
As the largest metropolitan area in California, Los Angeles is at the center of grassroots progressive politics. Every election cycle, ACCE LA’s leadership works hard to evaluate which candidates and initiatives reflect our organization’s values of racial and social justice, and then we mobilize our massive canvassing and phone call campaigns in support of progressive ACCE-endorsed candidates. Thanks to our canvassing efforts, ACCE has propelled several initiatives and candidates to victory in local and statewide races. These electoral victories include Measure ULA, the mansion tax voters approved in 2022, and Measure A, the countywide sales tax passed in November 2024 that will raise money to provide programs to address LA’s homelessness crisis. The following LA-area ACCE endorsed candidates also won their races in 2024: Heather Hutt and Ysabel Jurado for LA City Council; Karla Griego and Scott Schmerelson for LA Unified School District Board; Pilar Schiavo, Nick Schultz and Sade Elhawary for state Assembly; and Sasha Renee Perez and Eloise Gómez Reyes for state Senate.
ACCE LA hosts online tenant clinics in Spanish every Tuesday from 6-8PM and in English every Thursday from 5 - 7PM, and in-person tenant clinics every last Wednesday of the month (holidays excluded.)
Every Tuesday, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM, Conducted in Spanish
Zoom Link: https://calorganize-org.zoom.us/j/88324434157
Call: +1(669)900-6833
Zoom Meeting ID: 883 2443 4157
Every Thursday, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM, Conducted in English
Zoom link: https://calorganize-org.zoom.us/j/84489313723
Call:+1(669)900-6833
Meeting ID: 844 8931 3723
Every last Wednesday of the month, 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM (Registration from 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM)
Community Resource Center
1233 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles 90006 (next to WSS Shoe Warehouse)