One-Stop Legal Shop
One-Stop Legal Shop
The Equal Justice Centre will bring 12 customs legal groups nether one roof, to help low-income Philadelphians. Information technology will be the first of its kind
May. 16, 2019
A Philadelphia mother recently found herself unable to pay her mortgage, in part considering her estranged married man had stopped paying kid support. She was on the brink of foreclosure, with a sheriff'due south sale of her habitation not far behind.
Drastic to salve her habitation, the woman went to Philadelphia Legal Help, at 7th and Arch streets, which provides free civil legal services to low-income Philadelphians. PLA obtained courtroom enforcement of spousal back up and so referred her to some other legal assistance group, Community Legal Services, at Wide and Chestnut streets. At that place, she told her story once again, to a dissimilar lawyer, who helped her employ successfully for a loan modification. Together, the assist enabled the adult female to stay in her home.
It was a happy catastrophe to what is commonly a tragic situation for and so many families in Philadelphia. Just it was not like shooting fish in a barrel: Every trip to a lawyer's office means fourth dimension away from piece of work, dealing with childcare, paying for transportation, duplicating paperwork.
"If somebody comes to your door and you are not able to help them, y'all hand them the card of the person who yous remember tin assist them who is downward the street, or across the city," says Jessica Hilburn-Holmes, executive director of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, which is leading the project. "The person might take that carte du jour and never go in that location and get that help."
That's why a dozen different legal organizations have come up together to class the Equal Justice Eye at 8 th & Vine streets, to provide "one-end shopping" for low-income Philadelphians who need ceremonious legal services on problems such as domestic violence, wrongful eviction and child back up, all in i place.
The nine-story edifice is scheduled to beginning construction in October and to exist open by January 2022. It will business firm legal assistance groups including CLS and PLA; the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania; and the Pennsylvania Health Law Project. Together, the fellow member agencies serve approximately 30,000 clients a year in their scattered sites effectually the metropolis.
The projection reflects a long-held recognition by the legal community that the coordination of legal-aid services would help meet an acute demand in America'south poorest big city, where more than 25 percent of the population lives at or beneath the federal poverty line. Hillburn-Holmes says information technology is the first of its kind in the country.
Nationally, 86 percent of civil legal problems reported by low-income people received little or no aid from lawyers, according to a 2017 report from the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit that works for equal access to the American justice arrangement. The report said seven out of 10 low-income Americans experience legal problems such as domestic violence, access to veterans' or inability benefits, merely they seek professional assist in only about xx percent of cases, and many go to court without legal representation.
7 out of ten depression-income Americans experience legal problems such equally domestic violence, admission to veterans' or disability benefits, only they seek professional help in but nigh 20 percent of cases, and many go to court without legal representation.
That'southward mirrored In Philadelphia, where four-fifths of low-income people who need a lawyer for ceremonious disputes don't take one, according to CLS, because they tin't afford a lawyer or are not familiar with how the legal system works. For depression-income Philadelphians who are faced with eviction, for case, legal representation could allow them to stay in their homes or negotiate rent deficit with their landlords, according to a report from the Bar Clan terminal year.
Preventing eviction can also save the City tens of millions of dollars in emergency
housing, medical and courtroom costs for people who don't take lawyers, the study said. City Council is now considering a pecker that would guarantee legal representation to any renter facing eviction whose income is less than 20 percent of the federal poverty level.
Proposals to co-locate the metropolis'due south legal assist providers have been around since the 1970s, says Hilburn-Holmes, only failed to gain traction partly because individual organizations felt they would lose their brand by amalgamating with others. But for the EJC tenants, that business has at present receded because they recognize that they will exist part of a group that has complementary skills.
PLA'southward executive director Anita Santos-Singh says both her group and CLS signed on considering they have recognized for a while that running ofttimes complementary legal services in different locations was non the best way of serving their clients. "As sister organizations, we have had as one of our strategic goals to co-locate," Santos-Singh said. "The Equal Justice Center represents an opportunity for us to achieve that goal."
At the EJC, being grouped in 1 building will also reduce members' costs through shared infrastructure, grouping purchasing, and mutual back-office operations, providing savings that can be used to better serve their clients. Their rent will be stock-still for thirty years at $15 a foursquare foot, most half the commercial rate for Heart Urban center office infinite.
The overall upkeep is $99 meg, of which $65 one thousand thousand will pay for construction. In that location volition be boosted costs for technology and to furnish the new function spaces at no price to the tenants.
Funding is coming from a multifariousness of sources including the federal New Markets Tax Credit program which offers revenue enhancement credits to investors in low-income areas; from Pennsylvania'due south Redevelopment Help Capital Program for the acquisition and construction of improvement projects, and from philanthropic efforts. A capital campaign launched in 2022 aims to enhance $l million over five years.
"At a unmarried bureau, as much as they attempt, they only practise the law they do," says Hilburn-Holmes. "But if people are coming into this edifice and see all these multiple problems, they can say, 'Nosotros can help you with all of these things.'"
Photograph by Rae Allen via Flickr 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/one-stop-legal-shop/
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