Western Center and its co-counsel helped low-income tenants, many with physical and mental disabilities, negotiate broad sweeping policy changes at the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles and at Alexandria Hotel, a century-old, single-room occupancy hotel where tenants had endured unlawful displacement as well as no heat during two winters, frequent water shutoffs (including over two summers), and frequent elevator shutoffs in the 12-floor building.

Eleven current and former tenants of the Alexandria teamed up with Skid Row-based non-profit LA-CAN to sue developer Alexandria Housing Partners (AHP), Logan Property Management, the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) and the City of Los Angeles for gross violations of civil rights, disability anti-discrimination law, community redevelopment law, federal and state relocation law, and housing conditions law that occurred since August, 2006 when the defendants took-over and began rehabilitation of the building. (Woods, et al. v. Alexandria Housing Partners, L.P., et al., United States District Court of the Central District of California Case No. CV07-08262 MMM (JWJx)) Plaintiffs -- over 100 tenants, most of whom had lived at the Alexandria stably for years and suddenly found themselves having to stay in homeless shelters or with friends and family in locations far from their social service providers - were represented by McDermott Will & Emery LLP, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the Disability Rights Legal Center, and the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

The settlement requires the defendants to accommodate the tenants' physical disabilities, bring the building to code, and to find all displaced tenants and provide them with relocation assistance, including both cash assistance and affordable housing units. It also requires the redevelopment agency to replace 82 units that will no longer be affordable for extremely-low income tenants and to create and strengthen policies designed at preventing displacement from future building rehabilitation efforts and increasing compliance with disability rights laws.