Page 18 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2019

FEATURE
Daniel Atkins
Delaware’s
In our justice system, having a lawyer matters — a lot
Three civil legal aid organizations in Delaware support Delaware’s most vulnerable populations. Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. (CLASI) since 1946, Delaware Volunteer Legal Services (DVLS) since 1981, and Legal Services Corporation of Delaware (LSCD) since 1996, have been representing people who are poor, people with disabilities, people who are elderly, veterans, immigrant victims of crime, survivors of domestic violence and other marginalized individuals.
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The three legal aid programs work col- laboratively to serve as many clients as comprehensively as they can in criti- cal areas such as housing, public benefits, health care, education, consumer law and domestic violence. In 2018, collectively, we handled more than 5,000 cases, two- thirds of which kept people housed or free from domestic violence.1
Last fall, for example, “Mary,” a dis- abled Air Force veteran with two children, was sued by her landlord for $4,000 in unpaid rent and possession of her house. Mary was stunned and panicked. She was stunned because the condition of the house was deplorable: water was leaking into the living areas through a hole in the
roof from a storm months before, mold was developing, electrical outlets were not working and the landlord was not fix- ing the home in a timely fashion. She was panicked because she did not know how to defend herself in court, she could not afford to hire a lawyer on her own, and she was not financially eligible for most free legal services. However, because she was a veteran, she was eligible for legal repre- sentation through a special program that prevents homelessness among veterans. A legal aid lawyer represented Mary in evic- tion court and successfully negotiated an agreement allowing Mary to abate her rent for several months (an amount equal to the rent she owed). She avoided an
Civil Justice Gap