Biography
Background: Elena I. Popp is a longtime activist and attorney for social change. She was born in Mexico and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1968 with her mother and two younger siblings. Elena became a community activist when a teacher brought a young UFW organizer into the classroom to talk about the dangerous conditions faced by workers in the fields. Elena enlisted in the farm workers’ movement that day. Since then, she has worked tirelessly on behalf of working families -- especially immigrants, women, children, those that live with disabling conditions, and those that do not have a place to call home.
Accomplishments: Elena has a broad range of experience in addressing the problems faced by working and low-income people and 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 including:
- Founder of an access to justice, social entrepreneurship project that guarantees representation to tenants facing the loss of their homes.
- Creator of one of the first in court domestic violence prevention programs, a model being duplicated throughout the state.
- Founder of the first non-medical model outreach team to the homeless mentally ill; a project that received national recognition and has been duplicated in other parts of the country.
- Leader in the successful effort to save 1.5 million units of affordable housing.
- Key participant in creating the Los Angeles Systematic Code Enforcement Program and other key slum abatement, childhood lead poisoning prevention and asthma prevention initiatives.
Elena will fight:
- For universal childcare and to restore state funding and local control to our public schools.
- For access to affordable healthcare via increased funding for health programs and a single payer system
- For improved worker pay, worker safety and better worker rights.
- For retirement security for public and private employees.
- For renewable sources of energy and to protect our environment from corporate and other polluters.
- For civil rights for all -- including marriage equality, the right to choose, and eliminating all forms of discrimination.
- For an improved quality of life in all communities in AD 45 by increasing open space, increasing and improving housing and transportation, and creating better paying local jobs.
Experience: Elena has nearly 20 years experience in legal services focused primarily in the areas of Housing and Community Economic Development. She is currently the Executive Director of the Eviction Defense Network (EDeN) a social entrepreneurship project dedicated to increasing access to justice for low-income tenants through sliding and below market fees. The project is self-supporting and will generate up to $5,000,000 to subsidize social workers, outreach workers, health promoters, organizers, as well as policy advocacy, slum abatement and environmental justice litigation.
From 1992 through 2004 Elena was an attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a legal services program with a 72-year history of providing comprehensive legal services to low-income residents of metropolitan Los Angeles. In 1994 Elena co-founded the Healthy Homes Collaborative of Southern California an innovative coalition that addresses the health consequences of environmental hazards in childrens’ environments.
Education: Elena received her undergraduate degree and law degree from the University of California Los Angeles. She has participated on the board and financially supports numerous community and social service non-profit organizations.
List of Endorsements
|
|
|
