Keeping Seniors Housed and Living Independently

This past May, Legal Assistance to the Elderly fielded a call about a 92-year-old senior being evicted in San Francisco.

Even for Laura Chiera, who sees cases of elder eviction, abuse, fraud, and foreclosures regularly as the executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit, the call was unnerving. 

“That’s insane to think of a 92-year-old having to live on the street,” Chiera says. “It’s shocking how many unhoused people in San Francisco are seniors.”

The city’s homeless estimates are alarming: 1 out of 4 people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco are over 50 and 10% are over 60. 

Since 1979, Legal Assistance to the Elderly has been providing free legal services to seniors and adults with disabilities. The bulk of the work centers around eviction – 60% of all the calls the organization gets are for threats to housing. The nonprofit also provides a multitude of other much-needed services such as foreclosure prevention, consumer debt mitigation, physical and financial elder abuse prevention, benefits advocacy, and end of life planning. 

Over those 43 years, Legal Assistance to the Elderly has handled 51,000 cases. The average age of a client is 68, half of them have a disability, and nearly all of the clients are low-income. 

While clients come to Legal Assistance to the Elderly because they’re getting evicted, Chiera says, the root cause can be someone abusing them and taking their money or their benefits were suddenly cut off.

Sometimes it’s a family member or caregiver trying to steal an elderly person’s house. Other times the bank initiates a foreclosure because of missed payments due to illness. Or, the senior is alone and disabled and can’t clean the apartment and is getting evicted because of it. 

Attorneys at Legal Assistance to the Elderly defend the seniors from eviction and work to stop any physical or financial elder abuses or get the clients’ benefits reinstated. The organization employs social workers and social service advocates to offer holistic wraparound services to help stabilize clients and ensure they can stay in their homes.

Under Chiera’s leadership, Legal Assistance to the Elderly has more than quadrupled over the last five years, extending its outreach to help a growing number of threatened and struggling seniors. Chiera has been able to grow the staff from eight to 34, including 21 attorneys. 

“Our work is key to allowing people to live with dignity and remain in their homes and be independent,” Chiera says.