“When can I get divorced?” I am often asked this question by married domestic violence survivors who meet me for the first time at the Superior Court’s Domestic Violence Intake Center, where Legal Aid attorneys are present four days a week to provide legal advice and assistance to individuals applying for Civil Protection Orders (CPOs) against their abusers. For many survivors of intimate partner violence, obtaining legal protection from abuse through a CPO is an important step towards securing their safety and independence. But, for those who are married to their batterers, it is the granting of a divorce – the severing of all legal and financial ties to one’s spouse – that represents and provides a more complete sense of freedom from abuse. Read more →

Rent control is the District’s largest affordable housing program, covering more than 80,000 units and protecting hundreds of thousands of tenants from displacement. It also is a program under attack. Too often, landlords are able to take advantage of loopholes in existing law to impose large rent hikes, at times to levels far above market, forcing long-time residents out of their homes and eroding the long-term affordability of rent control units.

The Washington City Paper published an article last week highlighting an abusive practice that some landlords engage in once they take these large rent increases. Landlords will advertise and charge lower rent amounts, offering tenant “rent concessions”. Tenants are told that higher rent levels are on the books but will not be charged. But when it comes time to renew a tenant’s lease, many of these landlords threaten to impose the higher rent amount and coerce the tenant into agreeing to a rent increase far higher than what rent control ordinarily would allow. Read more →

On May 4, the D.C. Court of Appeals announced that it was considering whether to amend D.C. Appellate Rule 49, which governs pro bono practice in the District by non-D.C. bar members. The Court’s Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law has proposed a series of amendments that is largely consistent with requests made by the D.C. legal services community. Several groups of which Legal Aid is a member or with which we work closely – the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, the D.C. Consortium of Legal Services Providers, the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center, and the Washington Council of Lawyers – submitted comments seeking changes to the rule, which had needlessly prevented competent lawyers affiliated with legal services organizations from offering free legal assistance to low-income clients. Read more →

The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia honored four individuals for their contributions to access to justice at its 29th Annual Servant of Justice Awards Dinner last week, raising $1.3 million to provide legal assistance to persons in poverty in D.C.

“Legal Aid, you provide an opportunity for lawyers to use their skills to fight injustices where we see them, to right wrongs, to pay attention when others might turn away,” said Abid Riaz Qureshi of Latham & Watkins, who received the Servant of Justice Award, and whose personal pro bono victories include a First Amendment case that allowed a Muslim-American film production company to display its comedic ads on the NYC subway system.

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In 2017, the D.C. Council passed two pieces of legislation to address longstanding problems in the D.C. Healthcare Alliance program. The program provides health insurance to some of the District’s most vulnerable residents but its burdensome process for renewing enrollment means that, each month, people in the program get dropped from their health coverage. Despite the Council recognizing the need to change the Alliance program and passing legislative solutions without a single “no” vote, the Mayor’s FY19 Budget does not include any funding for either piece of legislation, allowing needless losses of coverage to continue. This budget season, Legal Aid has testified at the budget hearings for both the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health Care Finance to urge the Council to do what the Mayor failed to do: work together to fund changes that Alliance program enrollees need. Read more →