Where LA tenants can get help

Keep the notice and the envelope it came in. Between the stated ground, the date and the way it was served, the notice fixes the two facts every later argument turns on, and it is the one piece of evidence a tenant always has.

Do not move out because a notice arrived, and do not stop paying rent to make a point. A dispute about an eviction is survivable; a dispute about arrears on top of it is much harder to argue and it hands your landlord an at-fault ground they did not have before.

Write down what happens as it happens: the date the notice arrived and how, every conversation and who was in it, anything you were offered to leave sooner. A contemporaneous note is worth more than a recollection months later, which is when this usually matters.

Then work out where you stand, which is what the eviction protection checker is for, and take that with you rather than instead of advice.

Four kinds of organization, and which one you want depends on what stage you are at.

Legal aid, for advice and representation. Nonprofit law offices that represent tenants in eviction cases at no charge. This is who to call if you have court papers, and who to call first if you are not sure what you have.

The city's eviction help programs, run with the County and legal aid partners, which combine advice, workshops and referrals into representation.

The LA Housing Department, which administers the city's two ordinances. It is not a legal adviser and it will not represent you, and it holds things nobody else does: the rent stabilization inventory, and the termination notices landlords are required to file. Asking whether a notice on your unit was filed costs nothing and the answer is a department record rather than an assertion.

The court's own self-help resources, for the mechanics of responding to a case: what has to be filed, by when, and on what form. Useful alongside legal aid and not instead of it.

Every organization in the table below was checked against its own published source, and the telephone numbers are the ones those sources give. Two things in it are worth reading before you call: the court's self-help service runs a live chat rather than a telephone line, and the LA Housing Department does not handle discrimination, retaliation, habitability or security deposit disputes, so those are a call to legal aid rather than to the City.

If you are a landlord rather than a tenant, none of the above is for you and the page you want is landlord rights in Los Angeles, which is the same rules read from the other side.

Say at the start whether you have court papers and what the date on them is, because that decides how urgently you are seen. If you have a written notice rather than papers, say what ground it states and when it was served.

Ask whether the notice is defective on its face, which is the question that most often ends a termination without the facts ever being argued, and bring the notice rather than describing it.

Ask what you may be owed. A no-fault ground generally carries relocation assistance, the amount depends on the tenancy rather than on the ground, and it is owed whether or not you want to leave. Two steps, in that order, and neither one stands in for the other. The landlord completes the declaration filing the LA Housing Department requires for that ground before the termination notice is served, and the assistance is then due within 15 days of the notice. Whether the filing was made is a matter of record rather than something either side says.

And ask about anything that happened before the notice. If you had complained, reported something or exercised a tenant right, that is a point for somebody qualified to weigh rather than one to argue yourself: see the eviction protection checker, which reports it as something to raise and asserts nothing about it.