August 7, 2020

A Letter to Our Supporters

Dear Friends,

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has hit our low-income and elderly neighbors particularly hard. Community Legal Aid is very grateful to all of our funders, partners, and donors for your support during these difficult times, which has enabled us to quickly adapt and expand the work we do to meet the needs of our clients.

• Our benefits advocates pivoted to assist the increased number of workers filing claims for unemployment insurance. In one of many such cases, our advocacy successfully helped a single mother reverse an incorrect denial of her benefits, working around technical glitches that occurred during the virtual appeal hearing with the Department of Unemployment Assistance.
• Our housing attorneys adjusted their work on behalf of tenants facing emergency housing issues by representing clients in telephonic and virtual hearings with the Housing Court. As an example, our advocacy stopped an eviction for an elderly tenant who was paying her rent and would have likely become homeless but for our intervention.
• As the incidence of domestic violence has increased in our service area, our family law unit has focused on helping survivors secure protection orders from courts operating remotely. This included successfully obtaining a one-year extension of an abuse protection order for a teenage client abused by a family member. 
• With schools providing remote instruction, our education attorneys turned their attention to helping families get school services in place for their children at home. In one typical case, our advocates assisted a family in obtaining tailored services for a student with special needs for whom the virtual classroom posed unique challenges.

Although the state has slowly begun the process of reopening, the crisis is far from over. At this time, the supplemental unemployment and SNAP (food stamp) benefits under the CARES Act have not yet been extended, and the state’s moratorium on evictions and foreclosures will end in the fall. Without these supports, we anticipate a staggering increase in the number of families at risk of losing their homes and in need of legal assistance.

As we prepare for this new wave of hardships, your support of Community Legal Aid is appreciated now more than ever.  

Thank you to all of our supporters who join with us in the fight for justice for some of the most vulnerable members of our communities.

Sincerely,

Jonathan L. Mannina, Esq.
Executive Director