Legal aid adds millions to Ohio economy

The Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation released an economic impact study showing that legal aid generated millions of dollars in economic activity for the Ohio communities it serves.

An example: In 2010, legal aid saved nearly 1,000 homes across the state from foreclosure, according to the report. Since even one foreclosed home in a neighborhood can lower property values for other homes by as much as 2.1 percent, the study estimates that legal aid helped protect more than $2.7 million in home value.

To read a Dayton Business Journal article about the report, click here. To read the report, click here.

Tipping the scales in housing court

From an op-ed in The New York Times: It’s easy to tell who’s going to win in eviction court. On one side of the room sit the tenants: men in work uniforms, mothers with children in secondhand coats, confused and crowded together on hard benches. On the other side, often in a set-aside space, are not the landlords but their lawyers: dark suits doing crossword puzzles and joking with the bailiff as they casually wait for their cases to be called.

Millions of Americans face eviction every year. But legal aid to the poor, steadily starved since the Reagan years, has been decimated during the recession. The result? In many housing courts around the country, 90 percent of landlords are represented by attorneys and 90 percent of tenants are not. This imbalance of power is as unfair as the solution is clear.

To read the entire op-ed, click here.

Legal Aid represents disabled woman barred from apartment for wrong breed of service dog

Metropolitan Maryland office staff attorney Sara Wilkinson

Hazel Sanders, an elderly, disabled Howard Co. woman, can’t move into a subsidized apartment because the management of the complex says her service dog–a Rottweiler–is “inherently dangerous” and it won’t allow a service-animal exception to its no-pets policy.

Anne Benaroya, an expert on animal law quoted in today’s front-page Baltimore Sun article, said the policy shows the potentially far-reaching consequences of a recent Court of Appeals ruling on pit bulls that quoted a 2000 study by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. The study concluded that Rottweilers and pit bulls made up more than half of human deaths from dog bites.

Legal Aid staff attorney Sara C. Wilkinson, who represents Sanders, said the argument doesn’t hold up, arguing there’s no Maryland law on Rottweilers, her client’s dog has no history of aggressive behavior, and that  “most importantly, federal anti-discrimination law protecting the disabled should trump a brief mention of a 12-year-old veterinary article in a case regarding pit bulls.”

To read the article, click here.

The foreclosure crisis hits seniors hard

Midday with Dan Rodricks on WYPR-FM explored a new AARP report that says the number of older Americans seriously delinquent on loans jumped more than 450 percent in the last five years.

Some 3.5 million older homeowners are underwater on their mortgages.  Older African Americans and Hispanics are the hardest hit. A show earlier this week looked at how the mortgage crisis has effected the country’s senior citizens and left millions of them fiscally vulnerable in retirement.

Dan’s guests were Vicki King Taitano, director of the Foreclosure Legal Assistance Project at Maryland Legal, and Susan Reinhard, senior vice president and director for the AARP Public Policy Institute. To hear the show, click here.

Civil legal aids to bid for foreclosure settlement funds

The two Maryland jurisdictions hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis–Baltimore City and Prince George’s Co.–will each get $10 million out of Maryland’s $1 billion share of the multi-billion dollar nationwide settlement, The Daily Record reported. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler made the announcement yesterday.

Nonprofit legal aid programs will bid for shares of $6.2 million earmarked for helping low-income people with their foreclosure problems.

“Legal Aid Bureau Inc., which provides free legal assistance, will seek a share of the $6.2 million through the RFP and would use its allotted money to help low-income homeowners facing foreclosure and related legal problems such as bankruptcy, said C. Shawn Boehringer, the group’s chief counsel,” the article said.

As seniors crumble under debt burden, Baltimore Sun goes to Legal Aid experts

In the lead business section article on Sunday, the Baltimore Sun looked at the economic crisis many seniors face because of debt (“Seniors crumple under debt burden,” May 27).  The Sun went to two Legal Aid experts.

From the article:

Louise Carwell, a lawyer who works with low-income seniors at the Maryland Legal Aid’s consumer law unit in Baltimore, said her clients are dealing with a wide range of debt, from credit cards to medical bills.

Many seniors in Baltimore also are behind on property taxes, which puts their homes at risk of going to a tax sale.

Carwell and other public-sector attorneys who work with the elderly say indebted seniors want relief, a trend that has increased in the last several years.

“The anxiety that they get or they create within themselves from debt collectors, that’s really punishing,” Carwell said. “That’s why a lot of my folks file for bankruptcy.”

Mary Aquino, a staff attorney with Legal Aid’s Baltimore County Elder Law Program, said she recalled a 75-year-old client who was nine months behind on her mortgage, with $10,000 in credit card debt and an additional $36,000 in student-loan debt. The woman’s sole income was a monthly $1,100 Social Security check.

“She’s hoping to file for bankruptcy and keep her home,” said Aquino, noting that student loans are usually not discharged in bankruptcy.

To read the article (behind a pay wall), click here.

 

The face of foreclosure in Maryland

Today’s lead letter to the editor in the Washington Post paints a clearer picture of the foreclosure crisis than an article that appeared on the front page over the weekend.

“The March 4 front-page article ‘We don’t believe in living for free’ told of a Prince George’s County couple fighting eviction from their home of five years even though they had never paid any money on their mortgage. While fascinating, the article did not reveal the true face of foreclosure in the county, and it was a disservice to readers who want to understand the situation,” wrote Vicki King Taitano, director of Maryland Legal Aid’s Foreclosure Legal Assistance Project.

“The reality of foreclosure in Prince George’s is this: People were aggressively pursued by mortgage brokers, who in turn received bonuses from banks for selling consumers high-interest loans,” Taitano continued. “The foreclosure crisis is not the result of speculation by people such as Keith and Janet Ritter, the focus of the article.”

To read the entire letter, click here.

Legal Aid foreclosure expert in the Post

After Occupy D.C. protestors rallied in support of Bertina Jones, a grandmother who lost her Bowie home to foreclosure, the Washington Post spoke with the director of Maryland Legal Aid’s Foreclosure Legal Assistance Project.

“Occupiers chose Jones to rally behind after discussions with staffers at Maryland’s Legal Aid Bureau, where Vicki King Taitano, who directs the bureau’s foreclosure legal assistance project, has championed Jones’s case for months,” today’s article said. “’This is a perfect example of a woman who was making her payments, and they still foreclosed on her,’ Taitano said.”

To read the article, click here.

The mortgage settlement and Maryland

Last week, Midday with Dan Rodricks on WYPR-FM looked at the $25 billion mortgage settlement reached with major banks and 49 attorneys general. Panelist Vicki King Taitano, director of Maryland Legal Aid’s Foreclosure Legal Assistance Project, called the settlement “positive.”

“I think refusal [by banks] to do principal reduction has been a big problem,” Taitano said. “This is a lot of money. If loans can be reduced to fair-market price . . . I’m hopeful this will make a big difference for a lot of people.”

To hear the broadcast, click here.

Bankruptcy: What You Need to Know in Maryland

Legal Aid has released a new brochure, “Bankruptcy: What You Need to Know in Maryland.” The brochure answers questions such as “What can bankruptcy do for me?” “Will bankruptcy wipe out all of my debts?” “How does bankruptcy affect co-signers?” “Are there any reasons I should not file bankruptcy?” and “Are there different types of bankruptcy cases?”

To download the brochure, click here: Bankruptcybrochure1211.