Homeless Advocacy Project - January 2007 Charity-of-the-Month

Homeless Advocacy Project
42 South 15th Street, 4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19102

tel: 1-215-523-9595 or 1-800-837-2672
fax: 1-215-981-3866
email: marsha@philalegal.org
web: homelessadvocacyproject.org

The Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) exists to meet the legal and advocacy needs of homeless individuals and families in Philadelphia. With a legal staff of five and a corps of 300 volunteer lawyers, paralegals, and law students, HAP engages in direct outreach to homeless individuals in need of legal services.

The Homeless Advocacy Project’s goals are to:
• Provide direct civil legal services to homeless families and individuals;
• Connect homeless clients with needed social services;
• Advocate for the needs of Philadelphia’s homeless population and promote positive policy changes to address those needs.

The Homeless Advocacy Project’s essential ingredient is community-based outreach to homeless persons. In the last decade, the number of homeless families and individuals in Philadelphia has continued to increase while the availability of affordable housing, as well as free legal aid and other services to the poor, has decreased. HAP’s unique outreach program is vital to a population whose legal needs would otherwise be unmet. HAP collaborates with shelter providers, homeless advocates, community service providers and the legal community.

Each month, the Homeless Advocacy Project conducts eight to sixteen legal clinics at shelters and soup kitchens located throughout the City. At these clinics, HAP’s staff and volunteers meet and interview prospective clients, assess their legal needs, provide advice and referrals for services, and offer on-going legal representation and advocacy to those with more complex problems. HAP currently holds legal clinics at twenty homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

The Homeless Advocacy Project also makes educational presentations to shelter residents and service providers to inform them of benefits and services available for homeless people, and to empower individuals to obtain benefits and services for themselves.

Through these efforts, the Homeless Advocacy Project is often instrumental in helping homeless men and women obtain the access to shelter, income, and services they need to begin making their way to more secure, stable lives.

Children and Families Project

In 1994, in response to the growing number of homeless children living in shelters in Philadelphia, HAP created a project to serve the needs of children and families. The Children and Families Project conducts specialized legal clinics at the City’s largest family shelters. These clinics attempt to address some of the most urgent legal needs of homeless children, including access to federal disability funds and special education services.

The Children and Families Project also provides legal assistance to families with children who have lost or are threatened with a loss of their TANF benefits as a result of welfare reform. Part of the Project’s role is to inform families about work requirements and possible exemptions thereto. HAP is working to ensure that sanctions are not unfairly imposed on families struggling with these work requirements. Additionally, HAP is working to appeal improper sanctions imposed by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare in an effort to protect vulnerable families from the permanent loss of welfare benefits.

In March 2001, HAP’s Board of Directors expanded the Children and Families Project’s mission to include the provision of assistance to families in the resolution of family law matters, including those regarding child custody and child support. The Project works to maintain family unification in the face of the numerous pressures that tend to break families apart when they become homeless. In addition, the Project attempts to help custodial parents who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to obtain child support either through the establishment of new orders of support or the enforcement of existing orders.

For more information or to volunteer for this project, please call 215-523-9595.

Credit Advocacy Project

In January of 2005 HAP began the Credit Advocacy Project (CAP) with support from the City of Philadelphia's Office of Emergency Shelter and Services (OESS). Under this project HAP represents homeless families who are finding it difficult to move from shelter to permanent housing due to poor credit histories.

After obtaining and analyzing credit profiles for the families referred by the City, HAP identifies those families whose credit histories reveal no significant barriers to obtaining housing. The City then places these families in permanent and stable housing, thereby bypassing the shelter system altogether. HAP also identifies those families whose credit histories reveal only minor debt that may be sufficient to act as a barrier to immediate housing but not enough to warrant drastic rehabilitation measures. HAP works with these families to arrange payment plans for specific debts and negotiate eligibility with housing providers. Again the goal is to secure quick housing placement for these families.

Additionally, HAP identifies families in need of extensive credit rehabilitation before they can be considered "housing ready." HAP investigates and disputes charges in cases of erroneous reporting and/or identify theft, and negotiates payment plans with utility companies and other creditors where appropriate. For families experiencing unmanageable debt loads who would otherwise be unable to obtain housing, HAP provides Chapter 7 Bankruptcy representation. Chapter 7 Bankruptcy enables these families to obtain a fresh start financially and become better housing applicants.

If you are interested in learning more about HAP's Credit Advocacy Project, please call 215-523-9595.

Shelter Advocacy Project

In 2003, at the urging of several community advocates including Sister Mary Scullion of Project H.O.M.E. and Robert Hess, Philadelphia’s Deputy Managing Director for Special Needs Housing, HAP set up a new project to address the needs of homeless families and individuals who, for a variety of reasons, are denied admission to, have difficulty obtaining services in, or are prematurely discharged from emergency shelter in Philadelphia. Seed money for the Shelter Advocacy Project was provided by the Samuel S. Fels Fund.

HAP has found that skilled advocates – generally, HAP staff attorneys – are usually able to satisfactorily resolve many of the problems consumers encounter as they make their way through the system.

For more information or to volunteer for this project, please call 215-523-9595.

Veteran’s Project

In the Fall of 2001, HAP expanded the reach of its network of legal clinics by establishing the Veterans Project, aimed at meeting the complex legal needs of homeless veterans. HAP holds a monthly legal clinic at the Perimeter, a daytime drop-in center for homeless veterans. The Perimeter is operated by the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service and Education Center, servicing an estimated 3,000 homeless veterans living in the Delaware Valley.

HAP’s Veterans Project is the only legal assistance program in Philadelphia that specifically targets homeless veterans. The Veterans Project was founded in response to a call from Perimeter staff who felt that many of the clients had urgent legal needs that were not being met. These needs included assistance with traditional “poverty law” matters, such as consumer and credit problems, landlord/tenant disputes, access to income maintenance programs, and family law issues, as well as veteran-specific matters such as eligibility for veterans benefits and compensation for service-related disabilities.

Through the Veterans Project, HAP has expanded its reach into the homeless community to educate and advocate on behalf of a particularly vulnerable population that had previously been overlooked by Philadelphia’s public interest sector. Through this project, HAP is creating opportunities for self-empowerment and sustainability and an end to the cycle of homelessness so many veterans experience.

For more information or to volunteer for this project, please call 215-523-9595.

Adopt A Shelter

In 1995, HAP began a new project to encourage volunteer participation by law firms and corporate legal departments.

Through the Adopt-a-Shelter project, a firm or corporate legal department agrees to staff a HAP legal clinic on a monthly or bimonthly basis. HAP collaborates with ten law firms and corporate legal departments through this program. HAP continues to build on these programs to help even more homeless clients.

History

In the fall of 1990, a group of concerned members of the Philadelphia bar and the homeless services community created HAP to address the unmet legal needs of the City’s homeless population. This group was led by the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Problems of the Homeless Committee, Community Legal Services (CLS) and homeless advocates, including Sister Mary Scullion of Project H.O.M.E.

HAP was founded in the belief that homeless people have unique and complex legal problems that often are not adequately addressed by traditional providers of legal services to indigent and low-income individuals. Homeless individuals lead transient, unstable lives, and are often debilitated by mental illness, substance abuse, and inadequate education. They frequently lack an understanding of their legal rights and the ability to make effective use of the network of advocacy and service organizations that are available to assist them. Living in crisis, often without income or resources, homeless persons are less likely, and less able, than other indigent clients to make use of Center City-based legal services programs.

To ensure that homeless people had access to legal services, HAP’s founders created an organization designed to deliver legal services directly to them in the places where they live and eat. Since its inception, HAP has conducted legal clinics in shelters and soup kitchens throughout Philadelphia. By recruiting and training volunteer attorneys, legal assistants and law students to staff these clinics, HAP is able to provide free legal counseling and representation to a population not adequately served by other legal services programs. HAP is the only legal services organization in Philadelphia that conducts such direct outreach to the homeless population.