Legal-support materials for a habitable packet

This is not legal advice. Nothing in this directory is legal advice, creates an attorney–client relationship, or guarantees that any court or agency will admit a packet or give it weight. These are educational templates and background notes. Have a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction review and adapt anything here before it is used in a real matter.

These materials are the legal scaffolding around a habitable packet — the human and procedural half of what makes the evidence usable. The tool produces a verifiable record (SHA-256 content hashes, RFC 3161 trusted timestamps, an append-only chain of custody, and a signed bundle); these documents help a tenant, an organizer, and an attorney introduce that record and explain, honestly, what it does and does not prove.

They realize backlog items E-19, R-30, E-20, and R-34 from docs/research/synthetic-personas-feedback.md. As that study says of its own findings: treat everything here as a starting point to validate with real attorneys and real courts, never as a settled requirement.

What habitable's evidence actually proves (the one thing to get right)

Everything in this directory rests on being precise about the boundary, because overclaiming in a courtroom fails the people relying on the tool. In short:

• A SHA-256 content hash + fixity check shows an item was not altered after capture.
• An RFC 3161 timestamp proves the content existed no later than a given time — an upper bound on when it was created. It does not prove authorship, that a photo depicts a particular unit, or that the underlying condition was as described.
• The chain of custody (exported in identity-stripped form) shows the recorded events were not inserted, deleted, or reordered — i.e., that the tenant/union controlled the device. That makes the record largely self-authenticating, not independent third-party proof of the condition.
• The packet is independently verifiable by anyone, using the standalone Apache-2.0 verifier or general-purpose RFC 3161 / SHA-256 tools.

The full method is in docs/evidence-method.md; the limits are in docs/threat-model.md and the README's Honest limits section.

Jurisdiction scope: CALIFORNIA ONLY (item R-34)

Any jurisdiction-specific guidance in this directory is scoped to California, and even that is general educational background, not advice. Evidence law varies by state (and between state and federal court). Do not extrapolate California-flavored notes to New York, Texas, or anywhere else; the rules on authentication, hearsay, and admissibility differ, sometimes sharply. The habitable pilot is currently scoped to California, which is why CA is the only jurisdiction addressed at all.

The declaration template and foundation guidance below are written to be largely jurisdiction-neutral (they describe the technology and general foundation concepts), but they still must be reviewed by a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction before use.

The files

• declaration-template.md — (E-19) a fill-in-the-blank declaration a tenant/witness can sign to lay foundation for moving a packet into evidence, plus an optional custodian/organizer variant for chain-of-custody foundation.
• foundation-guidance.md — (R-30) guidance for an attorney or advocate introducing a packet: authenticity/integrity of the digital record vs. proof of the underlying condition, how to lay foundation, how to explain timestamp semantics to a judge, the standalone verifier as the answer to "how do we know the tool isn't cooked," and the evidentiary limits opposing counsel will raise.
• california-evidence-notes.md — (E-20) a California-scoped, educational cheat-sheet on authenticating digital photographs and records and the objections to anticipate, plus a plain-language "what to expect on cross-examination" section for tenants.
• minimal-disclosure.md — (R-35) what a produced packet contains and, just as importantly, what it deliberately omits; the current whole-unit boundary and optional originals/metadata choices; and guidance on responding to an over-broad discovery demand (scope statement, protective orders, and that the disclosure decision is a legal one).

How to use these responsibly

1. Read docs/evidence-method.md so you can describe accurately what the packet contains and what each component proves.
2. Have a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction review and adapt the declaration and tailor the foundation to the specific case and court.
3. Never tell a tenant the packet "guarantees" anything. The honest framing — this record was not altered after capture and existed by this date — is the tenant's shield, not a weakness to hide.