Legal aid nonprofit says it can lower SF homelessness

• By Adam Shanks : sfexaminer – excerpt

Reggie Daniels lived with his grandmother for nearly all his life and never doubted that he and his sister would one day inherit her house in Bayview-Hunters Point.

But when his grandmother died in 2020, he said, he discovered that her will had been reworked in the final months of her life to bequeath Daniels’ longtime residence to her children — not to Daniels and his sister.

The inheritors decided to sell the house and proceed with an eviction, which Daniels and his sister didn’t believe they could fight…

Daniels and his sister found Open Door Legal, which represented them in a two-year legal process — Daniels’ attorneys believed his grandmother was coerced by her children to rewrite the will’s terms — that ended in a settlement and allowed them to stay housed, he said…

Open Door Legal wants to expand the right to counsel beyond these relatively strict parameters, welcoming any legal issue and helping them assess their needs, Tirtanadi said.

“A person might not understand that, for example, if you get locked out of your unit but don’t get filed with eviction papers, that’s not considered an eviction — you couldn’t go and get legal assistance necessarily through tenants right to counsel because there’s no formal eviction that’s been filed,” he said…(more)