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.