Community Housing Advocate (JD preferred but not required)
Full-Time, Exempt
About Us:
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” - Nelson Mandela
We believe that even the biggest problems can be broken down into small, achievable steps. Poverty and access to justice are part of the same problem. And to solve this, we just need to discover the steps. At Open Door Legal (ODL), we’re pioneering the country’s first system of universal access to civil legal representation to dramatically reduce poverty and prove that the law really can belong to all of us. To achieve this ambitious goal, we’ve created an award-winning and best-in-class legal aid organization full of passionate, motivated, gritty, thoughtful, and team-oriented people. We believe that injustice is the heart of poverty and we're looking for someone to join us in having a systemic impact on how we, as a society, ensure justice for all.
Overview of Position
Housing has the attention of everyone in the Bay Area. A safe and healthy home is a universal human right, yet it is consistently unrealized or threatened for those in poverty. Open Door Legal provides holistic, trauma-informed housing services, helping people access everything they need to feel safe and secure in their homes. We are hiring a Community Housing Advocate who will work collaboratively with the entire housing team and with your clients to help ensure the rights of San Francisco low-income residents to keep safe and healthy homes. In this role, you will proactively reach out to the community. Through this, you will get the pulse of the community-specific issues and be the key to ensuring community-centered advocacy and legal education. To be successful, you must be enthusiastic to engage and build trust with the community. Thriving in this role requires grit, dynamism, teamwork, care, and passion (our organization’s five core values). You will report directly to the Managing Housing Attorney.
Responsibilities
- Embody our mission of universal access to civil legal aid and work with the team to make sure that the civil litigation needs of all clients in our service area are met.
- Cultural humility is not just conceptual to you, you embody it and commit to growth. Your trauma-informed service demonstrates how you see clients as whole people who are partners in achieving successful legal outcomes.
- Own 15+ open housing law cases consisting of subsidy retention cases, and assisting pro pers with small claims cases.
- Facilitate housing and brief service intakes across multiple physical Open Door Legal office locations.
- Maintain communications with SFHA through bi-weekly meeting
- Attend community-facilitated information sessions and outreach events
- As necessary, represent clients at rent board hearings, SFHA administrative hearings, grievance hearings with subsidized housing providers, mediations with the Conflict Intervention Service, and DFEH mediations to improve clients’ living conditions.
- As part of a team, conduct intakes and assist in cases in areas of law that are unfamiliar to you. Work quickly on challenging, intellectually interesting, and interpersonally difficult cases.
- Provide services and support to our low-income clients with sensitivity and awareness to cultural, socio-economic, and disability differences. Keep a high rating in the client feedback survey.
- Embrace and embody our values of teamwork, grit, caring, passionate, and dynamic.
Requirements:
- At least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent education or work experience.
- To meet the needs of our client we are looking for an advocate willing to work a flexible schedule to include evenings and weekends.
- Strong time management skills and the ability to handle quick timelines, manage diverse activities, and meet critical deadlines with minimal supervision
- Experience in the community organizing space.
- Must genuinely enjoy and be motivated by working with low-income clients and be able to work competently with clients impacted by trauma (emotional, mental, and physical).
- Must actively demonstrate cultural humility and sensitivity to barriers low-income residents face when attempting to interface with government agencies and the courts.
- Have a high level of comfort learning and using technology and cloud-based case management systems. We use Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Suite.
- Embrace and embody our values of teamwork, grit, caring, passion, and dynamism.
- Must be willing to make a minimum two-year commitment to the organization.
Bonus Points:
- Completed JD.
- Comfortable practicing, translating, and interpreting in Spanish and/or Cantonese (this comes with a slight compensation increase).
- Experience working with low-income and vulnerable populations.
- Experience working in a high-volume legal aid, doing community organizing or outreach.
- Having lived a significant period of your life in San Francisco proper, specifically, a connection to the Bayview/Hunters Point, Excelsior, Sunset, or Western Addition neighborhoods.
Starting compensation is $70,500 - $86,500 annually based on experience.
Benefits:
- Loan Repayment Assistance - for staff pursuing 10-year public interest debt forgiveness, we will pay the minimum payment on all qualifying loans so that you don’t need to worry about student loan debt (this is a conditional benefit).
- Medical/Dental/Vision Plan offerings at 100% coverage
- Generous paid time off (four weeks vacation and two weeks sick/care)
- We care deeply about our staff’s mental and emotional fitness and financially invest in staff who pursue ways to address this through a stipend.
- Flexible work hours
- Generous paid parental leave
- 401K/Retirement Account
- We believe everyone is always learning. We financially invest in professional development for each staff member and provide many internal and external mentorships, coaching, and learning opportunities (conferences, workshops, etc.).
- We are a fun and hard-working office with best-in-class technology solutions for anyone who’s passionate about making a meaningful and measurable difference.
Applications received before April 1 will receive priority consideration.
Ideal starting date: As soon as possible
Open Door legal is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal records, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at whitney [at] opendoorlegal [dot] org.
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