Accomplishments

Elena Popp has a broad range of experience in addressing the problems faced by working and low income people.  She has the training, tenacity and skills to develop solutions, build support for legislation, secure its passage and ensure meaningful implementation.   Elena has solved seemingly intransigent problems in our communities.

Access to Justice:  Between seventy and eighty thousand people are evicted each year in Los Angeles County.  Fewer than 2% are represented by a lawyer.  99% of the tenants that represent themselves lose their homes.  Families that are evicted are destabilized and often face temporary homelessness.  Some fall into prolonged homelessness.  Evictions are the primary cause for the loss of affordable housing in the City of Los Angeles.  A vast majority of tenants facing eviction are minimum wage earners that simply cannot afford their rent. 

Elena is the founder and Executive Director of a community-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that guarantees representation the 70,000 tenants that face eviction in Los Angeles County each year.  Before the Eviction Defense Network (EDeN) opened, over 69,000 people were turned away by then available free services.  When the agency reaches capacity it will fund social service intervention, policy advocacy, organizing and impact litigation.

Civil Rights:  In addition to her participation in numerous civil rights organizations, Elena developed the Diversity curriculum for a course she co-teaches at Santa Monica College.  The three day segment on racism, sexism, classism and homophobia is challenging and effective.

Community Education:  Elena worked on the team that developed the comprehensive Building a Capable Community Organization (BACCO) Training Program.  The BACCO program has trained thousands of community based nonprofits and assisted them in going from idea to success.  Elena saw the effectiveness of the program one day when she was at a conference where community organizations were receiving awards and grants from the County Department of Health Services.   Four of the six award recipients were organizations that had gone through the BACCO Program.  Elena also worked with ACORN to establish a know-your-rights clinic that has helped thousands of tenants with housing problems in the past five years.

Domestic Violence: Elena is the founder of the first “self-help” domestic violence prevention program located in a courthouse, a model that has now been duplicated in over 20 courthouses throughout the state.   Similar projects have also been developed to address other, high volume legal issues such as evictions.

Homeless Prevention:  Elena is the founder of the first non-medical model outreach team to the homeless mentally ill.  This was a highly successful project that received national recognition and has been duplicated in other parts of the country.

Preservation of 1.5 Million Units of Housing:

• Elena participated in drafting legislation and organizing a campaign that secured passage of the Low Income Housing Preservation and Resident Homeownership Act, a law that transferred 1.5 million units of affordable housing from for-profit developers that wanted to displace low income tenants to tenant and community control. 
• Elena worked with tenant associations at several developments to effectuate purchases and preserve their homes
• When the funding for the Low Income Housing Preservation and Resident Homeownership Act was threatened in 1995, Elena coordinated a national campaign to preserve the funding.  Republican legislators sought to completely de-fund the program.  Because of the number of units eligible for purchase by tenants, the program needed a funding increase from $150 million to $732 million.  Advocates for the housing initially sought to set the goal at $150 million out of fear of aiming too high and getting nothing.  Elena’s leadership resulted in persuading tenants and advocates all over the country to fight for the $732 million.  The campaign succeeded.

Slum Abatement/Environmental Justice and Health Access: 

• Participated in creating the Systematic Code Enforcement Program of the City of Los Angeles, a national model.
• Facilitated the purchase of Comunidad Cambria by the tenants.  The property, a slum building, was transformed into a jewel in the community.
• Healthy Homes Collaborative: Examples of the Collaborative’s success include:
• Addressing health access needs for hundreds of families in our target communities;
• Securing significant policy changes in how lead poisoning is handled by the Department of Health Services, shifting the focus from treatment of already poisoned children to the prevention of poisoning by eliminating hazards from children’s environments;
• Securing slum abatement compliance and the transfer of a critical mass of buildings to nonprofit ownership in a particular census tract;
• Forcing a notorious slumlord to clean up several of his buildings;
• Securing passage of state legislation and changes in the housing code enforcement programs in the Cities of Los Angeles and San Diego to ensure that landlords use safe work practices when making repairs, thereby reducing the threat of childhood lead poisoning and the exacerbation of asthma triggers;
• Securing safe work practices in several small shops when lead dust in the home was traced to father’s work clothes; 
• Securing the participation of the residents of a neighborhood severely impacted by air pollution due to their proximity to industry and transportation corridors in EPA efforts to address the cumulative impacts of multiple sources on a particular neighborhood.