Missouri's Justice Gap

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

Last week, I attended an excellent speech by the newest Judge on the Missouri Supreme Court—Judge Paul Wilson.

In his presentation, Judge Wilson noted a staggering fact: nearly 100,000 Missourians this year will be sued or file suit in Missouri courts without representation of counsel. The sad truth is that tens of thousands more low-income Missourians, with serious legal needs will never get to court, because they cannot afford a lawyer. 

In his brief speech, Judge Wilson called on Missouri lawyers to increase their pro bono work for people in need. Here’s a link to the speech:

http://www.lawmo.org/pdf/WilsonSpeech.pdf.

 

It’s short and well worth reading.

Blight Fight Continues

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

Kansas City is on the cutting edge nationally on the issue of how to reduce the number of abandoned properties in the city’s urban core and Legal Aid of Western Missouri’s Economic Development team is playing a key role in that work.

In the last week, there have been two articles in the Kansas City Star discussing Legal Aid’s partnerships with the city, neighborhood associations, law firms, banks and others to turn blighted, abandoned property into high quality, occupied housing. The first dealt with beneficiary deeds that keep money (in the form of home equity) that is desperately needed in the urban core, in the urban core.

The second was on the front page of the Star yesterday morning and dealt with an initiative conceived by the Post-Foreclosure Task Force, which Legal Aid’s Michael Duffy leads and in which the city is a close partner. The idea is to get local banks to provide financing for high quality rehabbers to rehab many more abandoned properties than they are able to do now.  You may have seen this on TV as well.

This is exciting work that can make a gigantic difference in increasing property tax revenues, decreasing crime and, most importantly, improving the quality of life in the city’s urban core.

We have a lot of great partners in this work including, just to name a few—city manager Troy Schulte, Council members Ed Ford and Cindy Circo (and really the entire City Council), John Wood and David Park who lead the city’s efforts to address abandoned and dangerous buildings in the urban core, and neighborhood leaders too many to mention.

In the coming year, I’m hoping that you’ll hear more about the expansion of these excellent projects.

SCOTUS Rulings Bring Us Closer to Justice for All

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

 

If Justice for All means anything, it should mean that the law should treat everyone equally and should not favor or punish a group of people for things that are beyond their reasonable control.

In the last century, our country has made impressive progress towards equality based on gender, race, national origin, religion and disability. Before yesterday, however, federal law openly, blatantly and intentionally discriminated against millions of Americans based solely on their sexual orientation.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court rulings will stop a good deal of that discrimination. And while we still have a long way to go to reach equality on all of the numerous forms of our historic discrimination, I’m excited that our Supreme Court had the wisdom and courage to bring us one step closer to truly having Justice for All.

Legal Aid Steps Up and Shares Resources

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

Pictures and stories of the horrible tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma yesterday bring back vivid memories of the May 2011 tornado that ravaged Joplin, Missouri.

The talented staff in Legal Aid’s Joplin office have learned a lot in the last two years about the recovery process from a tornado and what a legal aid program can do to get a community back on its feet. I have talked with Janice Franklin, the Managing Attorney of the Joplin Office, and we have reached out to Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma to make sure that they get the benefit of everything that we have learned in the last two years.

Resources we are offering include: our comprehensive disaster-relief manual; tips as to legal issues that are most likely to appear immediately after a disaster (rental price gouging being one of them); lists of likely funders for disaster relief work and sample grant applications; suggestions on how to help their staff deal with their own emotional trauma from the storm; and ideas on how to staff up after the storm.

Helping people in need is what we do best and we will make sure that the people of Moore get all the help that we can give them. Many thanks to Janice and her staff for sharing their knowledge.

From Eyesore to Asset: Neighborhoods Win

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

In case you missed it, there was an excellent article on the front page of the Kansas City Star this morning highlighting the community development work that is being done by Legal Aid’s Economic Development team, including: Michael Duffy, Jeff Williams, and Ron Nguyen, along with former Legal Aid attorneys Gillian Ruddy and Kendra Mosley.  

 

(Click here to read the article.)

 

As the article shows, the work that Michael, Jeff and Ron are doing, now with Jennifer Wieman, Rachel Hogan and Peter Hoffman joining in, is on the cutting edge nationally in fighting urban core blight caused by abandoned housing.

 
Like so many other Legal Aid projects, even though the Economic Development team is doing fantastic work, very few people in the area know about it.  The article in the Star will help change that and, by doing so, will help solidify the funding that we get for this work from the City and from private foundations for the team’s work.  It will also help us make a strong case for increased funding for this important work in years to come.

Thanks and congratulations again to Michael, Jeff, Ron, Gillian, Kendra, Jennifer, Peter, and Rachel for the recognition for jobs well done.