LANGUAGE ACCESS

The immigrants who are one-third of LA County’s population are often stopped at the door when it comes to accessing available county services because they do not speak, read or understand the language in which these services are made available. The literacy gap can extend to platforms with which they are not familiar, including digital, making for a double barrier. IRLA’s initial requests to fill this void are:

• Create a community work group to review and provide feedback for county departments’ language access plans.

• Allocate $500,000 to OIA to hire at least three more OIA staff to work on language access.

• Dedicate adequate resources to promptly launch Language.LACounty.gov hub.

• Allocate $5M for contracts with local CBOs for translation and interpretation services and expedite those contracts.

• Allocate $3M for capacity building grants for CBOs to provide translation/interpretation services to the county.

HOUSING

Housing is a foundational need for everyone, and immigrants’ access to it is severely limited. The COVID pandemic increased homelessness among immigrant Californians, and now rising rents and vanishing renter protections put them at greater risk. A “housing first” approach by BOS involves:

• Reduce the rent increase cap from 5 percent to 3 percent, or 60% of CPI change, whichever is lower. Lowering the overall cap can help them overcome hurdles that now allow increases to go far above 5 percent.

• Allocate $10M to fund rental subsidies through a housing subsidy pool to keep up to 3,000 immigrant families in their homes. This pool would specifically help immigrants who can’t qualify for federally funded rental subsidies.

WORKER JUSTICE

Lost income from wage theft drives homelessness rates and other forms of poverty in LA County. In LA, 88% of low-income workers experience wage theft, and immigrant workers are twice as likely to experience wage theft as their counterparts. We recommend:

• Establishing a Worker Wage Theft Retaliation Restitution Fund for qualifying workers that file claims with the California Division of Labor Strategic Enforcement for wage theft or retaliation.

• Investing an initial $2.5 million toward a wage theft retaliation restitution fund, with an additional $300,000 for the Department of Economic Opportunity to educate workers on how to access the fund.

SOCIAL SAFETY NET

Immigrants contribute billions yearly in state and local taxes, helping fund California’s programs. But thousands have no financial safety net as they reach retirement. By 2030, seniors will be 28 percent of LA County’s population. Immigration status should not prevent some of those seniors from accessing programs that maintain their financial wellbeing. We recommend:

• Expanding the Breathe Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) program to undocumented seniors 60 and older.

• Investing $93.2M to support the 15.5% of Los Angeles County's population living below the poverty line, including the growing number of adults 60 and older.

• Establishing a county-funded public-private savings account pilot for immigrants to help them build a financial safety net, similar to programs managed by Opportunity LA and ScholarShare529. It should be available regardless of income, background, immigration status, include incentives, and not count as household income.