In Featured Interview, Executive Director of LSC-Funded Connecticut Legal Services Discusses Upswing in Foreclosure Evicted Tenants, Falling IOLTA Revenues, Need for Increased LSC Funding, and Need to Lift Federal LSC Restrictions
Legal Services E-lert
Bibliographic Info:
Author: Joy Moses
Source: “Economy Strains Legal Services for the Poor,” Center for American Progress (CAP)
Date: June 23, 2009
On helping families or individuals manage foreclosures or evictions connected to foreclosures:
". . . . A large part of the caseload of lawyers doing housing work for low-income people has become defending tenants who are being evicted as a result of foreclosure. And what's amazing about these cases is that these are generally people who are paying their rent . . . . So we've been fighting really hard not only for individuals, but also talking to policy makers, talking directly to banks, to try to get them to let tenants who are paying their rent to stay in the building and not add to the problem."
On facing resource challenges:
". . . . [S]tarting last fall, the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts funding sources has just collapsed because nobody is doing any real estate business-everything is just frozen up and interest rates are almost zero. And so the IOLTA revenues . . . in Connecticut have dropped by 80 percent . . . . We've lost one-third of our funding, and it has just created huge pressure on our organization."
On the assistance that can be provided at the federal level:
". . . . For starters, the biggest line of money to support legal services is the Legal Services Corporation funding and that line has been too low for a very long time, and I know there are proposals around to try to get at least the authorized level doubled from where it has been in recent years. And that would be a really great step.
A second thing, also related to Legal Services Corporation funding, is that there's a set of restrictions on what that money can be used for which has resulted in distributing the money in sort of awkward ways in some states, including Connecticut, where the money has to be segregated in different agencies and not necessarily supporting all of the work of legal aid. So lifting of what's called the private money restriction [would help-it] says that if you take the federal dollars not only do the restrictions that come with it apply to the federal dollars, but they apply to your whole agency and everything else that you do. Even if another funder gives you money specifically for a project, you may not be able to do that project if you take the federal dollars . . . . So fixing the Legal Services Corporation structure, both in terms of the funding level and the private money restriction, would be very helpful . . . ."