Greater Boston Legal Services Inc

Programs: Greater boston legal services (gbls) is the primary provider of free civil (non-criminal) legal assistance for the almost 230,000 low-income persons living in metropolitan boston to help them secure some of the most basic necessities of life. Our clients are homeless families seeking access to emergency shelter or permanent housing, women and children escaping abuse, families facing destitution, poor individuals and families facing illegal or inappropriate eviction, low-income homeowners exploited by mortgage scams, elders inappropriately denied medical and prescription drug benefits, disabled individuals denied critical benefits, low-wage workers illegally denied earned wages and victims of torture and persecution seeking asylum. In 2017, gbls provided legal assistance on more than 10,900 legal matters for its low-income clients. Assistance ranged from brief service and advice to full representation, based on the needs of the case. Thousands of additional poor individuals and families who were not gbls' clients also benefited from gbls' work through community legal education programs and impact advocacy efforts such as class action suits, legislative and administrative advocacy, all of which bring about systemic change. Gbls conducts special outreach projects to specific populations which face barriers to accessing legal assistance. Such efforts include gbls' asian outreach project conducting regular intake hours in boston's chinatown; elder unit staff making home visits, engaging in outreach at nursing homes and providing community legal education programs at scores of elderly sites; employment unit staff conducting regular outreach efforts to low-wage workers; and family law staff conducting regular outreach efforts in chelsea for abused women, as well as continuing a unique on-site program at both middlesex and suffolk probate court to assist abused women who come to the court pro se seeking a restraining order. Gbls' consumer unit continued its debt relief clinics in chelsea and roxbury, helping low income consumers defend themselves against unscrupulous or fraudulent debt collection practices. Gbls' health and disability unit, continued its children's disability project to assist disabled children and their parents gain critical benefits. The unit continued its major systemic initiative, health care access for people with disabilities project to overcome barriers for individuals with disabilities to accessible, high-quality health care at major boston area medical facilities. Unit attorneys also assisted thousands of individual elder clients to secure or retain some of the most basic necessities of life. Gbls' welfare unit advocates assist clients to obtain or retain critical benefits to keep their families from destitution. Unit attorneys are monitoring implementation of a settlement agreement in a major class action suit against the massachusetts department of transitional assistance for its failure to appropriately assist its disabled clients in a number of major areas which resulted in the denial of life sustaining benefits. Gbls' employment unit attorneys continued representing low-wage workers illegally or inappropriately denied wages and benefits. At the request of the tax court judge, unit attorneys continued to be present on the first day of each tax court session in boston to assist pro se litigants in their negotiations with irs attorneys over the low-income taxpayer credit. Most litigants, many of whom do not speak english as a first language, are unrepresented. The unit also continued its cori/ reentry project to assist former offenders in overcoming barriers that prevent them from successfully reentering society and maintaining self- sufficiency. Attorneys in the family law unit focused on assisting victims of domestic violence to secure independent lives free from abuse. As part of this work, the unit continued its first in the nation relocation project that provides advice on legal issues related to the relocation of victims of domestic violence and continues to provide training and advice on the national level through a program run in partnership with the national network to end domestic violence. Attorneys in the housing unit continued to provide representation to low-income tenants in efforts to obtain or retain affordable housing and for homeless families to obtain or retain emergency shelter or priority for permanent housing. The unit also represented low-income tenant groups to ensure the long-term preservation of at-risk affordable housing units. To date, the unit has helped preserve thousands of affordable units which faced being lost to market rate rents. Staff also continued advocacy efforts to expand housing subsidies and funding mechanism to build more units of affordable housing. Gbls' immigration unit continued a project to provide victims of torture seeking asylum in the u. S. With legal assistance as well as psychological counseling and medical care. The unit also continued its women refugees project which continues to assist immigrant women gain resident status based on gender claims, its battered immigrant women's project that assists battered immigrant women in establishing legal u. S. Status independent of their abusers, and its unaccompanied minors project which provides representation to children under the age of eighteen who have entered the united states without their parents. The asian outreach project continued its work as a model community lawyering program, that in addition to assisting individual low-income asian individuals who encounter barriers to securing legal assistance, helps empower a disenfranchised community. The asian battered women's project continued to provide critical legal representation to asian victims of domestic violence.