- The New Hampshire Union Leader interviewed NHLA Housing Justice Project Director Elliott Berry about tenants’ rights when a landlord goes through a foreclosure or fails to pay utility bills.
- The Telegraph of Nashua wrote about NHLA paralegal Candace Cappio Gebhart’s monthly outreach to clients of the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter.
- The Concord Monitor wrote about NHLA’s legislative advocacy to improve protections for tenants who discover lead paint in their homes:
- “The changes in the law will make it much easier for landlords to get notice and respond appropriately much sooner, and presumably before the child suffers serious damage,” said Elliott Berry.
- PBS NewsHour featured medical-legal partnerships, an innovative program at some hospitals where patients are given legal aid advocates to help them secure safe housing, quality food and other benefits that may protect their health. The Huffington Post also featured medical-legal partnerships. The author, Ellen Lawton of George Washington University, wrote:
- “I used to work at an urban safety net hospital as the “patients’ lawyer.” It’s there where I met Dora, a single mom of three young kids. Her child’s pediatrician was worried because Dora didn’t have any income after securing a restraining order against her violent husband, and she and her children were on the edge of homelessness. Working with the hospital’s case manager, we quickly found a temporary income benefit designed to prevent her eviction, giving the family time to stabilize after a traumatic event and Dora the chance to seek employment. Five years later, I heard from Dora out of the blue. I feared the worst and braced myself; lawyers rarely get anything but bad calls. But Dora was calling to tell me that she now owned her own child care business. She beat the odds, and wanted me to know that the work we did together not only prevented her from becoming homeless, but empowered her to make changes to take care of her family.”
- Several national news outlets covered the release of a report by the Institute for Policy Integrity that shows how increasing access to civil legal services can reduce domestic violence rates by helping victims secure their safety and can often save communities the cost of emergency homeless shelters for women and children fleeing violent homes.
- From the report: For survivors, having an attorney can increase the likelihood of obtaining a civil restraining order from 32 percent to 86 percent. Restraining orders, in turn, can reduce the occurrence of violence and help survivors feel safer and more empowered in their relationships and lives. Attorneys can also assist with other legal issues, such as child custody, divorce, housing, and government benefits, which may be holding survivors back from leaving abusive relationships.
