Legal Aid of Southeastern PA offers support for a variety of clients
Although the nonprofit has never stopped making itself available to those who need its services, even during the pandemic, Legal Aid of Southeastern PA is slowly gearing up to welcome clients back to its offices at some point.
“We are here for anybody that has legal problems that have been made worse by the pandemic,” said Shawn Boehringer, executive director of the organization that provides free civil legal aid in Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware counties.
“To ramp up operations, I believe the governor’s guidance (calls for) 75 percent occupancy, so we have that to consider, and the guidance also says to continue to work remotely where possible. So we are trying to balance those two directives. I think it’s a time when we need to ramp up our in office presence, so we’re doing in a gradual and thoughtful way and making sure that we continue to be responsive to the needs of the communities.”
While the offices have been closed due to the pandemic, the staff has been available to assist individuals with cases ranging from domestic violence and housing to bankruptcy, employment and elder law.
“The courts are now reopening to a greater extent for custody hearings, children and youth hearings, domestic violence cases,” Boehringer said.
“The governor did extend the moratorium on evictions, so that’s something we don’t have to have a real active presence for at this time. But we’re sort of getting ready for it when it comes.”
Funds from the CARES
Act, Federal funding being administered through the state, seemed to come along when they were needed most.
“Assistance from the CARES Act provided funding for legal services programs to deal with the COVID-related issues. So we are planning on ramping up our staff short term to deal with a higher volume of COVID issues, which include landlord-tenant cases, consumer collection cases, bankruptcy, family law issues that may have arisen from the pandemic,” Boehringer said.
“We have a limited time to use that funding, so we’re ramping up our staff short term to address what we believe will be a significant increase in the need for our services in the next few months. The CARES Act is going for a number of different services. For example, there’s $175 million for rental assistance to help people with some of the arrears they might have on rent. A relatively small piece of that funding was directed toward Legal Aid programs across the state to provide more services for folks that have had problems because of the economic downturn.”
Those issues could include claims for unemployment benefits, landlord tenant issues, inability to pay a debt, debt collection, bankruptcy or family law, Boehringer said.
“The courts are dealing now with a large backload of family law cases because of the shutdown,” he added. “We hear a lot about cases involving custody visitation issues that the pandemic has caused. One parent does not want to let the non-custodial parent exercise their visitation because of fear that the child will have greater exposure to COVID. There are things like that that we can address. The combination of the courts being closed and the economic stress that people have experienced, and the fear of contracting the virus itself have all contributed to family law issues.”
The basic federal criteria for Legal Aid assistance is 125 percent of the poverty level, which varies depending on household size, Boehringer said.
“With CARES Act funding we’re going to be able to help people who are up to 250 percent of the poverty level. It helps us perhaps represent low to middle income people who have been adversely affected by the coronavirus who may not otherwise have qualified So this funding allows us to represent folks with a little higher income. We also have funding to represent older adults without regard to their income, and we have funding to represent domestic violence victims without regard to their income.”
Legal Aid’s expanded helpline hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Helpline (877-429-5994) serves Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties. To start an online application, visit lasp.org/apply.
Legal Aid is offering a virtual Employee’s Rights workshop, July 20, 2 p.m. via Zoom.
Legal Aid is located at 625 Swede St., Norristown.