Saad Gul, Loaned Associate - Steptoe

Over the past 24 hours, a number of news outlets, including the Washington Post , have reported on the latest Census figures showing that a record number of Americans — nearly one in six — live in poverty. And poverty by this measure truly means poverty: An individual making $11,000 or a household of four with a total income of $22,500 is not considered poor. The release of these official Census data simply offers statistical confirmation for what Legal Aid and others in the legal services community have observed since the start of the Great Recession: that the already daunting plight of the poor has become even more desperate. 

Legal Aid has long witnessed the deteriorating reality of the District’s poorest residents. For persons living in poverty, this most recent economic crisis has depleted both government services and private giving at the precise moment when the sharp downturn in the economy has made these kinds of assistance most critical. As such, the need for civil legal services is greater now than ever before. At a recent intake in Legal Aid’s Southeast office, applicants flowed out of a packed waiting room into the lobby outside. Legal clinics to assist veterans have been steadily swamped; additional sessions are snapped up as soon as they are made available. And many agencies have lost count of desperate applicants struggling to obtain or appeal their denial of public benefits, housing, and basic government services, often fighting an uphill battle in proceedings that should never have been brought in the first place. 

Access to civil legal services can make all the difference in the world. For instance, Legal Aid recently managed to assist a client connect her newborn son — who had been born with severe development disabilities — to an assistance program for which he was eligible. Early intervention in this instance was critical: timely treatment will likely enable him to grow up relatively healthy, and almost certainly more healthy than he would have been in the absence of the treatment. Beyond securing access to public benefits and other assistance programs, Legal Aid handles civil matters that go to the very heart of health, safety and security for District residents and their families, from saving homes and to assisting victims of domestic violence. 

Especially in these challenging economic times, we are more committed than ever to ensuring equal access to justice.

Lucy Newton, Supervising Attorney

We are pleased to announce that Legal Aid will again be participating in a Public Benefits Training series this Fall.  This training series is a partnership between the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, and Whitman-Walker Health Legal Services with support from Bread for the City and DC Hunger Solutions.  We greatly appreciate the DC Bar Pro Bono Program for partnering with us and hosting this training series.

The trainings are free and an opportunity to learn about eligibility, benefits, application procedures, and practical tips on how to help your clients navigate the system.  It is also an opportunity to hear about new developments or policy changes affecting that benefit program.  We encourage case managers, legal services lawyers, pro bono lawyers, or anyone who works with low-income clients to attend these sessions.  

Registration is required – please email Jeremy Strauss at jstrauss@legalaiddc.org with your name and organization name and the sessions that you want to attend.  We have some space limitations and need to provide counts for each training to ensure we have enough copies of materials so please RSVP.  

Quick List of Training Session Dates & Topics:

• Tuesday, September 20, 2011 – SSI / SSDI
• Tuesday, October 4, 2011 – Access to Healthcare: Medicaid/Medicare/DC Healthcare Alliance/QMB/Health Reform
• Thursday, October 27, 2011 – Medicare Parts A, B, C, & D & QMB
• Wednesday, November 9, 2011 – TANF: Cash assistance for poor families
• Friday, December 2, 2011 – Food Assistance: SNAP/Food Stamps, WIC, and other food resources
• Wednesday, December 14, 2011 – Immigrant Eligibility for Public Benefits

 *All sessions are from noon – 2 pm and will be held at the DC Bar, 1101 K Street NW, Washington, DC.

Additional information can be found on this Public Benefits Training Series Flyer – 2011.  Please feel free to share the news of these trainings widely.

David Steib, Staff Attorney

We are delighted to announce that the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia was recently awarded a Flom Incubator Grant to help realize the goal of providing specialized representation to tenants with difficult claims in the Housing Conditions Calendar at DC Superior Court. Legal Aid is one of eighteen organizations nationwide to be awarded a Flom Incubator Grant by the Skadden Fellowship Foundation in July 2011.  The Grants are made possible by a generous testamentary bequest of Mr. Joe Flom, the founding trustee of the Skadden Fellowship Foundation, as well as significant donations in Mr. Flom’s memory by Skadden partners and others in the legal community.

Legal Aid’s Flom Incubator Grant allows the Housing Law Unit to focus special attention on litigating cases in the Housing Conditions Calendar in which tenants suffer from bedbug infestations  and mold . The Grant enables Legal Aid to hire expert witnesses, where necessary, to document the problems of mold and bedbugs in our clients’ homes and to testify about them in court. The Grant also allows Legal Aid both to take more of these cases — with the goal of assisting additional tenants — and, eventually, to create helpful precedent that will be useful to tenants throughout the District. 

If you are a tenant struggling to obtain mold remediation or bedbug extermination from your landlord, or if you know such a tenant, please contact Julie Becker (jbecker@legalaiddc.org; (202) 661-5946) or David Steib (dsteib@legalaiddc.org; (202) 386-6675) for more information.

Beth Harrison, Supervising Attorney & Director, Court Based Legal Services Project

Legal Aid’s Housing Unit sometimes represents tenants living in subsidized housing who are facing eviction and/or the loss of their housing subsidy under the federal “one strike” policy.  Federal law prohibits tenants from engaging in criminal activity that disturbs others, including any violent or drug-related criminal activity, on or near a subsidized housing property.  The policy applies to misdemeanors as well as felonies, regardless of whether any criminal charges were ever pursued or won.  The tenant is responsible for not only her own actions but also the actions of her household members and guests, even if she is not personally involved in any activity, does not know about it, and could not have prevented it.  The policy is truly “one strike and you’re out”:  a tenant can be evicted and lose her housing subsidy, even if she personally is innocent and offers to bar the offender. 

As you might imagine, the one strike policy can have particularly harsh consequences for our clients.  To cite one common scenario, because a young adult son possesses marijuana on the property, his mother and the rest of the family can lose their apartment and their subsidy.  Since the waiting lists for subsidized housing in D.C. are measured in terms of years rather than months, the loss of a federal housing subsidy can be devastating for a low-income family. 

Last Sunday, the New York Times published an article examining the implementation of the one strike policy by the Chicago Housing Authority.  Among the findings it reported:  86 percent of cases from 2010 had nothing to do with the primary leaseholder; 76 percent of cases that year were misdemeanors; and in the majority of cases, the defendants were found not guilty, their cases were thrown out, or they were never prosecuted.  Legal Aid has observed similar trends in the application of the one strike policy in D.C.

Jen Ngai Lavelle, Staff Attorney

Since the launch of its Consumer Law Unit in 2008, Legal Aid has worked to help many low-income DC homeowners avoid foreclosure by litigating mortgage-related fraud cases, negotiating loan modifications, and conducting community outreach and education. With a rising number of foreclosures devastating individuals, families, and neighborhoods across the country, the gravity of the current foreclosure crisis and the importance of keeping people in their homes is easy to see. But according to new research findings, the link between foreclosure and well-being may be much broader and more far-reaching than meets the eye. This study, conducted by Janet Currie of Princeton University and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University and described in the Wall Street Journal, looks beyond economic well-being and draws the connection between health problems and the increase in foreclosures in some of the hardest hit areas of the United States.

Rosanne Avilés, Supervising Attorney -Housing

The D.C. Office of Human Rights recently released a proposal to amend Chapter 10 of Title 4 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations (DCMR).   The proposed amendments would address several important issues, including providing significant housing protections to victims of domestic violence.

One of the proposals would require housing providers to make efforts to provide safe housing to a victim of an intrafamily offense, including transferring the victim to alternative housing that is either managed or owned by the provider.  Such a proposal would greatly help victims of an intrafamily offense, particularly victims residing in certain federally-subsidized apartments.  Currently, victims of domestic violence living in federally-subsidized project-based Section 8 housing have very limited, if any, options for transferring to other subsidized housing when they need to leave their current housing in order to protect their safety.  Although a housing provider may own or manage multiple federally-subsidized project-based Section 8 properties, there is no law in place right now that requires it to transfer a victim of domestic violence from an apartment in one federally-subsidized property to another such property. This proposal would change that.

Late last month, Legal Aid submitted a comment letter to the D.C. Office of Human Rights supporting the proposed amendments.  In it, we expressed that we strongly support the amendment that will require housing providers, such as owners or managers of multiple project-based Section 8 properties, to transfer a victim of an intrafamily offense to alternative housing that is owned or managed by the provider when needed to provide safe housing to the victim.  This provision will allow victims of an intrafamily offense to retain their housing subsidy if they need to move from their current home for safety reasons. Thus, victims of an intrafamily offense would no longer need to choose between retaining affordable housing and living in safe housing.

We commend the D.C. Office of Human Rights for their efforts to provide greater housing protections to victims of an intrafamily offense and hope the proposed amendments to the DCMR will be implemented.

Jen Ngai Lavelle, Staff Attorney

After enduring a multi-stage battle in a consumer case to which she should have never been a party, Legal Aid client Tangela Garnett finally prevailed in her fight against a company collecting on debt she simply did not owe.

In the fall of 2010, Ms. Garnett was shocked to learn from her employer that over $300 was being taken out of her paycheck every two weeks to pay a court judgment of approximately $3,000. Unaware of any such judgment against her, Ms. Garnett immediately went to the court clerk’s office to investigate. It was there she learned for the first time that in 2003, a debt collector had sued her on an alleged unpaid credit card debt — and that when she did not appear in court, a default judgment had been entered against her. Now, eight years later, the debt collector was garnishing her wages to collect on the amount of the judgment.

Ms. Garnett had never heard of the lawsuit. She had never been served, and the person described in the plaintiff’s affidavit of service did not match her description or that of anyone who would have been able to accept service on her behalf. Nor had she ever received any notice of the initial court date or entry of the judgment. Perhaps most unsettling was that she did not recognize the underlying credit card debt — the debt was not hers.

Ms. Garnett filed a motion to vacate the judgment and stop the garnishment, but the motion was denied. Legal Aid entered its appearance and moved for reconsideration, but the judge again denied the motion. While this was ongoing, Ms. Garnett continued to watch money being taken out of her paycheck — money that she normally relied on to pay for her housing, food, and other necessary expenses.

But Ms. Garnett and her Legal Aid attorney did not give up. They requested yet an additional level of review and ultimately prevailed, this time with the judge issuing an order vacating the 2003 judgment and remanding the case for a new trial. According to the judge’s order, the plaintiff debt collector had failed to provide sufficient proof of the underlying debt when it offered no documentation other than a self-serving affidavit of one of its own employees stating that Ms. Garnett owed the collection company the amount of money stated in the complaint. Therefore, ruled the judge, the judgment that the court had previously entered against Ms. Garnett — and that formed the basis of the wage garnishment — was invalid.

Ms. Garnett’s case was resolved prior to trial, when the plaintiff provided her a refund of the full amount garnished from her pay and dismissed all claims against her with prejudice. She now receives her entire paycheck every two weeks, and the debt collector cannot bring a new action against her based on the same debt.

 Legal Aid congratulates Ms. Garnett for her tenacity and her individual victory in this case, but it also recognizes there are countless other District residents who have been victims of what are at best, sloppy — and at worst, abusive — collections practices. Legal Aid will continue to fight on their behalf through litigation and advocacy to ensure that their rights are protected and interests are represented.

Meridel Bulle-Vu, Staff Attorney

In the busiest branch of the courthouse, in what were traditionally criminal proceedings, parents litigate over the “science and math” of parenthood: paternity and child support.   Almost all low-income parents—both custodial and non-custodial—appear in the Paternity and Child Support (P&S) Branch of the D.C. Superior Court pro se.  Meanwhile, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) represents the District of Columbia in initiating and establishing orders against the non-custodial parents of children receiving Temporary Assistance for Need Families (TANF) or Medicaid (also known as “DC Healthy Families”).  OAG sets the calendar, negotiates consent agreements, and litigates disputed cases, sometimes without the custodial parent’s participation.  Unaware of their rights, non-custodial parents often give up without a fight and consent to orders that do not reflect all the facts or which they cannot afford to pay.  Those that do demand a hearing struggle to present necessary facts or make legal arguments.   Custodial parents, often unrecognized as a party to the action, struggle for a voice at all.  Magistrate judges are forced to make sense of the imbalanced, often imperfect information presented as evidence in their attempt to impose fair support orders. 

Recognizing the need for scrutiny and reform within the P&S Branch, the DC Access to Justice Commission, the Legal Aid Society of DC, and Bread for the City joined forces to shine a light on this previously under-scrutinized branch of the D.C. Superior Court.  The new initiative that resulted from this collaboration – the Child Support Court-Based Legal Services Project – is modeled on the success of a similar project in the Landlord-Tenant Branch of the D.C. Superior Court, in which Legal Aid has also taken a lead role.  Capitalizing on their experience in representing both custodial and non-custodial parents to Legal Aid and Bread for the City established a court-based community legal services office, currently operating in its pilot phase.   Thanks to Administrative Order 11-07, issued by Chief Judge Lee F. Satterfield on May 27, 2011, public interest attorneys can now provide temporary, same-day representation of low-income District residents in child support matters before magistrate judges.  After screening for residency and income-eligibility, attorneys from Legal Aid and Bread for the City are available to counsel, advise, and temporarily represent both custodial and non-custodial parents in paternity and child support proceedings.   In the pilot phase, we are currently covering one magistrate judge’s calendar twice a week.  So far, we have represented several non-custodial parents on a temporary basis, given advice to many more, and expect the numbers of parents seeking help to increase steadily over time.

Some question the wisdom of representing people often branded “dead-beat dads.”  However, we only assist parents, custodial and non-custodial, with legitimate legal issues; a non-custodial parent merely seeking to avoid his child support obligation would not qualify for assistant by the project.  Furthermore, many parents, including those without primary custody, are struggling to stay out of poverty and face serious, often systemic barriers to a fair and accurate support obligation.  Three clients I’ve recently served through the project personify the types of clients we’re able to assist at the courthouse:

H.R. was in court for his second child support hearing.  Even though the custodial parent was no longer receiving public benefits, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) was still representing her in the case against H.R.  According to OAG’s initial calculation, H.R. owed over $400 a month in child support.  This calculation, however, was based on a number of erroneous factors.  I entered a temporary appearance and informed the magistrate judge that H.R. in fact shared custody with the custodial parent and that their child was currently living with H.R. for the four months of the summer.  In addition, I was able to convince the court to use more updated, accurate income information for H.R. rather than annualizing overtime holiday pay.  H.R. will return to court in the fall to present further evidence of his income and their custody arrangement before a permanent order is entered. 

Before we met P.P., he had already successfully requested genetic testing from the court and had obtained results excluding him as the father of the child at issue in the case.  OAG, however, still considered P.P. to be the child’s legal father because he had signed a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity at the hospital when the child was born, and therefore refused to consent to dismiss his case.  After receiving our advice the day of his DNA Review Hearing, the magistrate judge continued P.P.’s case for him to seek legal counsel, and we then accepted him for extended representation.  I entered an appearance at his next hearing and successfully argued for the court to disestablish paternity, terminate P.P.’s child support obligation, vacate his arrears, and dismiss his case.  

D.M. is disabled from an on-the-job accident several years ago.  He continued to pay his $400 child support orders from his workmen’s compensation checks while he received them, but now that his only income is SSDI, he struggles to meet his own basic needs on less than $800 a month.  To make matters worse, Social Security erroneously has been deducting $500 from his checks for the last several months, leaving him with less than $300 for food, shelter, transportation, and his substantial health needs.  I entered an appearance on behalf of D.M. and reduced his monthly obligation to $50.  In addition, I raised the possibility of D.M.’s minor child receiving derivative benefits through his SSDI, an amount that could vastly exceed his current order and even include a lump-sum back payment. 

These are the kinds of folks we believe should (and hope will) benefit the most from the court-based advice and representation.  In the end, we do this for the children, which is why I am proud to count myself among Legal Aid’s court-based attorneys. 

Our ultimate goal for the project is to reduce childhood poverty and correspondingly improve child well-being within the District.  This is most likely to happen when non-custodial parents believe their order is fair and accurate, which in turn is more likely when the process is thorough, efficient, and transparent.  Client by client, our work on the project will ensure that parents have access to justice and that, in the end, children actually receive the support they need and deserve.

Jen Ngai Lavelle, Staff Attorney

Last week, justice became real for a Legal Aid client whose daily life had been derailed by a company using highly illegal and abusive tactics to attempt to collect on a debt of less than $500.

Ms. H had originally come to Legal Aid because she was receiving multiple calls from debt collectors purporting to be law enforcement officials and threatening to throw her in jail over two checks — written for $150 and $300 — which had bounced.  The callers falsely identified themselves as investigators or police detectives and told her that she was guilty of committing check fraud.  Faced with the fear of imprisonment, Ms. H provided one caller with her personal bank account information so his company could withdraw the funds they claimed necessary to satisfy the debt.  She came to Legal Aid fearful of what would happen when the company learned she did not have enough funds in her bank account to cover the full amount.

In the span of only two months, Ms. H had received approximately 120 calls from the collection company, many of which included variations of the same threats of criminal prosecution.  The repeated and abusive behavior caused Ms. H, who was already disabled, to become depressed and anxious.  She developed insomnia and lost her ability to continue working at her part-time job.

Legal Aid filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ms. H against the company for violation of various local and federal debt collection and consumer protection laws.  At Ms. H’s court hearing, Legal Aid presented evidence of the abusive collection practices to the judge in the form of various witness testimony and tape recordings of sample collection calls.

After hearing the evidence, the judge found that the company had violated multiple provisions of local and federal consumer protection and debt collection laws and entered a judgment in favor of Ms. H for over $35,000, which included actual, statutory, and punitive damages.  The judge also ordered payment of almost $7,000 in attorney’s fees to Legal Aid, which does not charge any fees to its clients but may be awarded compensation in certain cases for the value of the legal services it provides. 

Legal Aid congratulates Ms. H for her victory in this case and thanks her for her role in helping to achieve a measure of justice for others in the District facing similar abuses in debt collection.

Eric Angel, Executive Director

 When the Generous Associates Campaign Co-Chairs set the highly ambitious goal of “711 in 2011” – $711,000 in 2011 – it seemed hard to believe we could ever get there.  The Campaign is officially over, the results are in, and the District’s associates have surpassed themselves!  We are so grateful to our supporters, who raised over three quarters of a million dollars to help us make justice real for the District’s most vulnerable residents. 

 Click here to read our press release and here to see the final tallies!