Boston study looks at practical impact of legal representation in eviction cases

Without representation by counsel, many vulnerable tenants forfeit important rights, lose possession of homes they could have retained, and forego substantial financial benefits — according to a study released today by the Boston Bar Foundation (BBF).  Funded by The Boston Foundation, the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, and the BBF, this study, “The Importance of Representation in Eviction Cases and Homelessness Prevention,”  comes as a follow-up to Gideon’s New Trumpet , a 2008 Boston Bar Association (BBA) report examining the civil right to counsel in Massachusetts.

“We funded this study because we felt it was important to take a good, hard look at the practical impact of legal representation in an area where losing a case means losing your home,” said BBF President John Donovan. “What’s unique about the final product is that it measures the results of representation in a segment of eviction cases involving low-income families using rigorous data collection techniques and analysis.”

To read the report, click here.

Social workers team up with Legal Aid lawyers

When clients come to Maryland Legal Aid, they’re often desperate. In addition to a pressing legal problem, they’re grappling with other issues that drive their lives into a crisis — no money, no housing or no medical care. Sometimes all of the above.

You could say they need a social worker almost as badly as a lawyer.

And you’d be right.

That’s why Legal Aid and the University of Maryland School of Social Work created a program that integrates first-year graduate social work students into the nonprofit law firm’s practice in downtown Baltimore.

“Clients come to us with a host of problems — the presenting legal problem, plus community-based needs,” said Cornelia Bright Gordon, chief attorney of Legal Aid’s administrative law and intake units. “For example, many people have barriers, such as mental health issues, that may interfere with the success of the legal problem. They need access to services to make the legal work stick.

“Since Legal Aid is the law firm of last resort, our clients are in true crisis,” Bright Gordon said. “They come in with threats of immediate eviction, no money or food in the house, and some are desperately ill, with no access to medical services and no insurance.”

The three-year-old project helps stabilize clients and bring their lives back to a state of equilibrium. “It’s a collaborative process between a lawyer and a trained social worker with hands-on, clinical therapeutic experience who is supervising four interns,” she said.

To read the entire Daily Record column, click here.

Woman homeless after Section 8 wants her to move into condemned house

Vanessa Davis had to sleep in a park for a few nights while waiting for repairs to an apartment that Baltimore City’s Section 8 had not approved for occupancy. Meanwhile, the housing department made rental payments to the landlord for a year on the unoccupied Reservoir Hill apartment, WBAL-TV reported last week.

Davis, who is disabled and is staying with relatives, had been dropped by Section 8 after it discovered she hadn’t moved in to the condemned house, but was reinstated last week after investigative reporter Barry Simms called.

“Someone dropped the ball,” Maryland Legal Aid staff attorney Kay Harding told Simms. “Someone approved this house without verifying the use and occupancy permit was there. This property should never have been rented, but they were trying to penalize my client because she didn’t move in.”

To see the report, click here.

Frederick Co. couple victims of foreclosure scams

A Frederick County couple thought they had saved their home from foreclosure, but they’re living in a garage, WBAL-TV investigative reporter Barry Simms reported last night. Their lender is the target of a nationwide federal investigation, and as if that weren’t enough, the couple says things got worse when they hired an attorney, who they paid $15,000. Finally, they went to Maryland Legal Aid, which helped them win a judgment of $355,000–money that they’ll probably never collect.

“The real crime is someone stole their house, stole all their assets, and there’s no way to get it back,” Legal Aid staff attorney Kathleen Hughes, who handled the couples’ case. To see the report, click here.

Veterans more likely to be homeless, study says

Military veterans are much more likely to be homeless than other Americans, according to the government’s first in-depth study of homelessness among former servicemembers.

About 16% of homeless adults in a one-night survey in January 2009 were veterans, though vets make up only 10% of the adult population, USA Today reported last week.

More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter — a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets.

The urgency of the problem is growing as more people return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found 11,300 younger veterans, 18 to 30, were in shelters at some point during 2009. Virtually all served in Iraq or Afghanistan, said Mark Johnston, deputy assistant secretary for special needs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

“It’s an absolute shame,” he said.

To read the entire article, click here.

City revokes license of Madison Park North Apartments

Baltimore’s housing department revoked the license of the publicly subsidized Madison Park North Apartments in Reservoir Hill, a move that could force out residents of 200 units.

And those residents haven’t been told what will happen next, the Baltimore Sun reported earlier this week.

“We need the Baltimore City housing department to sit down with us and tell us how this is going to work,” said Legal Aid staff attorney Tabinda Riaz, who represents the tenants’ association.

To read the article, click here.

Vulnerable get hurt when uprooted from public housing

Maryland Legal Aid housing expert Greg Countess was quoted in a Sept. 30 Baltimore Sun article about Madison Park North Apartments, “City plan to take down troubled housing complex a familiar tactic.”

Baltimore City plans to revoke the complex’s multifamily dwelling license because of rampant crime. Residents are afraid they’ll be uprooted during the middle of the school year and won’t be able to find new housing.

“It’s usually the most vulnerable who wind up getting hurt,” Countess said. “Those who are disabled, thost who are elderly, those with large families. Already some Madison Park residents have been calling around to landlords and have been told ‘We’re not taking anyone from Madison Park’ because of the complex’s reputation for violence.”

To read the article, click here.

Madison Park North residents left out of the process

Maryland Legal Aid staff attorney Tabinda Riaz was quoted in the Baltimore Sun in an article about a hearing on the fate of the Madison Park North public housing project in Baltimore.

More than two dozen residents attended the hearing, saying they were worried that they would be unable to find comparable housing or afford to move if the complex, beset with violence and drug dealing, loses its multifamily dwelling license. Legal Aid represents the tenants association.

“I don’t think the city is realizing that this could result in mass homelessness,” Riaz said. “Residents have been left out of the process.”

To read the article, click here.

Right to housing ‘as American as apple pie’

The question to whether there’s a right to housing in the U.S. will be answered at the second of four lectures in the Homeless Person’s Representation Project’s Speakers Series Sept. 27.

The featured speaker is Florence Roisman, the William F. Harvey Professor of Law at Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, a nationally recognized expert in homelessness, low-income housing, and housing discrimination and segregation.

“Not only is the right to housing recognized in international law, it grows out of U.S. doctrine,” Roisman said in a phone interview for this week’s Of Service column in the Daily Record. “Franklin Roosevelt raised it in his 1944 State of the Union Address as part of his ‘Second Bill of Rights,’ and Congress established a national housing goal in the 1949 National Housing Act.” To read the column, click here.

A panel discussion follows the lecture with assistant director of advocacy for income security Peter Sabonis of Maryland Legal Aid; Jeff Singer, president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless; and Jeremy Rosen, policy director for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

The free 90-minute lecture starts next Monday at 7 o’clock in the Wheeler Auditorium at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore. For more information, call (410) 685-6589, ext. 24 or visit www.hprplaw.org.

New law will strengthen protections for domestic violence victims

A law that goes into effect Oct. 1 strengthening protections for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault isn’t just a win for the most vulnerable people in society.

It’s also a template for what can happen when legal services advocates working in different areas form a coalition and work for a common cause.

“The most important way this new law will help domestic violence and sexual assault victims is by improving their safety by giving them housing choices they didn’t have before,” said University of Baltimore School of Law professor Michele Gilman, who spearheaded the effort to get the bill through the General Assembly.

“It gives them autonomy in how to secure safe housing,” Gilman said. “They can stay in the property and get the locks changed, or terminate the lease early.”

The coalition brought together advocates who don’t have much of a history of working together in Maryland: lawyers who help domestic violence victims and low-income housing lawyers.

To read the rest of this “Of Service” column in the Daily Record (written by Maryland Legal Aid communications director Joe Surkiewicz), click here.