We Helped Lead the Passage of SB 1051 — Now We Must Make the Laws Work

Thanks to FVAP’s leadership and advocacy, SB 1051 passed in 2024, creating some of California’s strongest housing protections for survivors of domestic violence. As of January 1, 2025, these protections are law:

Locks must be changed within 24 hours at no cost to the survivor
Tenants do not need a restraining order to request a lock change
Protections cover immediate family and household members
Landlords cannot deny a survivor or their family housing due to the survivor’s history of abuse

Passing the bill was a major victory — but laws alone don’t keep survivors safe. They must be understood correctly, enforced fairly, and applied consistently.

FVAP's Housing Logic Model

Why Your Support Matters
Every day, survivors face eviction, unsafe housing, and discrimination due to abuse-related property issues. And for too many Californians, the stakes are life–altering:

One in five women who become homeless in California cite intimate partner violence as the immediate cause.
Among those who lose housing because of abuse, 81% end up unsheltered because of limited shelter availability.
Survivors who experience homelessness after fleeing abuse are at extreme risk of further violence: 42% report continued abuse while unhoused.

Without enforcement of new laws:

Survivors may be wrongly billed for damage
Lock-change requests can be ignored
Housing providers may still turn survivors away

That’s why FVAP’s Housing Safety and Justice Program is doing the hard work of turning protections on paper into real safety at home. We train advocates, produce survivor-friendly legal tools, and offer free legal support so survivors — and the people helping them — can assert these hard-won rights. Thanks to donors like you and our recent successful Battle of the Bands fundraiser, FVAP is financially strong — ready to put your gift to work turning legislation into safe homes.

How You Can Make a Difference
Your gift helps turn legal protections into safe homes:

$10 – Keep our Legal Resource Library online and free, so survivors and advocates can access templates and tools anytime.
$50 – Provide one-on-one guidance to an advocate helping a survivor assert housing rights.
$150 – Support the creation of plain-language legal tools, like template letters and information sheets, that survivors can use to assert their rights.
$500 – Provide a training session for 10 outside advocates to enforce lock-change and housing protections across California.
$1,000+ – Produce multilingual legal tools so all survivors can access and assert their legal protections regardless of primary language.

Donate today to turn these protections into safe homes. Just click the blue Donate button, choose your gift amount, and make an immediate impact for survivors who are at risk of homelessness right now.

Keep the Momentum Going
With the strong support of our donors, FVAP helped lead the passage of SB 1051 in 2024 — now it’s time to make sure every survivor in California knows and can use these protections.

Forward, together, we can make sure every survivor has the power to assert their rights to safe housing–and help prevent homelessness before it begins.

End-of-Summer Housing Campaign • Now through September

By Family Violence Appellate Project (FVAP)

End-of-Summer Housing Campaign • Now through September

The Law is on the Books — Now Let’s Make It Work for Every Survivor

Team Members