Without a home, your whole life can shatter...

By Jane Worley, Supervising Attorney - Central Office Housing Plus 

Every person we represent on the Housing Plus Team has one thing in common. They are asking for help with one of the basic needs for human beings—shelter.

Sometimes they have a home, but a landlord or a government agency has decided they have broken the rules. Sometimes the rules actually were broken, but it is for circumstances beyond their control, such as an abusive ex-partner who won’t let a locked door keep them from their target. There may be no money for rent or utilities because the car needed to get to work breaks down or your child needs new school items in September. Some of our clients cannot get into subsidized housing to relieve a rent burden of 60 to 80% of their take home income because they have an old eviction or there just isn’t anything available.

Without a home, your whole life can shatter in no time at all.

Here is one example of a client’s problem which we were able to help him resolve:

Jerry has an anxiety disorder which causes him to lash out at when anyone who comes into his apartment. He complained frequently to the manager about maintenance coming into his unit, taking his things or moving or breaking things. He said he never got notice that maintenance was coming. His landlord responded by telling him he was a nuisance and filing for eviction. A Legal Aid Housing Plus attorney asked for a reasonable accommodation of his disability to which the landlord did not respond. Jerry’s Legal Aid attorney then filed a Fair Housing Complaint with HUD, resulting in a Conciliation Agreement allowing him to stay if he provided the landlord with an alternative person with whom to discuss problems relating to maintenance.

________________________________________________

Legal Aid of Western Missouri's housing advocates provide a broad array of legal services, focusing primarily on public housing and Section 8 housing. Our housing counselors regularly provide advice or representation to help our clients avoid wrongful evictions and improper rent calculations. Landlord/tenant disputes and uninhabitable housing conditions are other legal challenges facing our clients. Housing advocates also assist people who are disabled with accessibility issues, and we help other clients with disputes over eligibility for public and subsidized housing.

The Changing Nature of the Legal Profession

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

At the 40th Anniversary of the creation of the Legal Services Corporation, there were lots of speeches by impressive dignitaries. There were also lots of impressive and surprising facts bandied around about the changing nature of the legal profession.

Here are a number of noteworthy facts and statistics that I came away with and which might be of interest to you. I have not done any confirmation of these, but can only tell you that they come from credible sources:

--The cost of litigation is resulting in alternative dispute resolution processes that are outside of the legal system. For example, in 2013, e-Bay resolved 6 million on-line disputes without the assistance of any attorney;

--In 2013, there were 335,000 cases brought in federal court in which the court provided an interpreter for a party or a witness who did not speak English;

--Washington State is considering issuing limited licenses to practice law, that would allow students to graduate from law school in substantially less time if they were only going to focus their practice on a specific type of work (for example, divorces on municipal court cases);

--New York State now allows law students to skip their final term of law school and take the bar exam in February, if they spend their final term working for a not-for-profit organization;

-- Justice Scalia at the conference said: "Access to justice is the most fundamental American ideal."

--The United Kingdom has de-regulated law. They now allow non-lawyers to own law firms;

--According to a 10-year Harvard study, the average new attorney changed jobs roughly 4 times between 2002 and 2012; 

--In half of the cases filed in the 7th Circuit in 2013 at least one party was not represented by counsel;

--In 90% of the divorce cases filed in Connecticut in 2013 at least one party was not represented by counsel;

--In 1978, federal funding for legal aid programs nationally was $205 million. That equates to $747 million in funding in 2014 dollars, when adjusted for inflation. That is more than twice the current level of federal funding for the legal aid programs’ work;

--Discretionary funding in the federal budget (which is where Legal Aid funding comes from) is now about one-third of the budget. In 2024, it’s estimated the discretionary funding will account for only 15% of the budget;

--In 1994, the largest 200 law firms in the country did about 900,000 of pro bono work. In 2013, they did over 5 million hours of pro bono work.

--Attorneys in Texas in 2013 did 2.5 million hours of pro bono work.

LSC's 40th Anniversary Kick-Off Conference

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

For the last three days, I have had the good fortune to be the guest, along with all of the other legal aid program directors, of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) at the 40th anniversary of LSC in Washington, D.C.

Guest speakers included Attorney General Eric Holder, Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who was one of the first presidents of the Legal Service Corporation Board), Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Antonin Scalia, as well as the deans of Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Duke law schools. Every living U.S. President sent a congratulatory letter.

From all, the essential underlying message was the same: the work of the legal aid programs is critical to the justice system and to the very success of the country as a whole. As Justice Scalia, of all people, put it: "Access to justice is the most fundamental American ideal."

We were repeatedly thanked profusely for our work, but those thanks really belong to the people who do the work on the front lines every day. So, to everyone who works for the cause-- attorneys, paralegals, secretaries, intake staff, volunteers and even the folks in administration-- please know that at the highest levels of government and the judiciary in our country, your work is known, understood and appreciated.  

And you should also know that, almost uniformly among the speakers we heard, there was a clear recognition that the work of the legal aid programs is grossly underfunded. 

There are a lot of good people at the Legal Services Corporation, the ABA, the Justice Department and the NLADA working hard to translate the appreciation we heard into increased support for our work. 

_________________________

There were lots of amazing facts and statistics bandied about at the conference. Later this week, I hope to get out another post with some of the more memorable ones.