About LSC
•Family law: LSC grantees help victims of domestic violence by obtaining protective and restraining orders, help parents obtain and keep custody of their children, assist family members in obtaining guardianship for children without parents, and other family law matters. In 2019, LSC grantees reported 136,820 cases involving domestic violence.
•Helping Veterans and Military Families: LSC grantees assisted nearly 100,000 veterans and their family with a range of legal problems in 2019. In 2020, LSC launched a national Veterans Task Force to strengthen the role of civil legal aid organizations in providing assistance to veterans. Legal assistance for housing and employment is especially critical given that veterans are more likely to be homeless than non-veterans and are twice as likely to have a disability
.•Natural Disasters: LSC has a long history with helping victims of natural disasters. Working in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the American Red Cross, and national and local recovery organizations, LSC grantees set up recovery hotlines, staff FEMA disaster recovery centers, and provide direct representation to low-income survivors.
•Housing Cases: In 2019, LSC grantees helped more than half a million people secure or retain access to safe, affordable housing. In many jurisdictions, 90% of landlords are represented by counsel while 90% of tenants are not. Housing cases represent the second largest category of cases closed by LSC grantees, comprising 29% of total cases closed in 2019.
•Rural Areas:Nearly 10 million rural residents qualify for LSC-funded services. While 20% of the nation’s population resides in rural communities, only two percent of lawyers serve these communities.In some states, there are counties without any attorneys, and in some rural communities, people must drive long distances to get help. LSC established a Rural Summer Legal Corps in 2016 to allow law students from across the country to provide legal services to low-income Americans living in rural communities.
Impact of COVID-19 and CARES Act
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the lives and financial security of people across the country.LSC grantees are on the frontlines assisting people during the pandemic. Based on a recent survey of LSC grantees, the overwhelming majority reported an increase in requests for assistance. Ninety-four percent of grantees said that they are seeing a spike in newly eligible clients. On average, grantees are seeing an 18% increase in the number of eligible clients due to the pandemic.
The top three case types that grantees see an increase in request for assistance are:
•Evictions (95% of grantees indicated an increase): including, but not limited to illegal lockouts, utility shutoffs, and foreclosures.
•Income Maintenance (88%): including, but not limited to issues with stimulus checks, access to unemployment benefits, and navigating furloughs.
•Domestic Violence (86%) has doubled during the pandemic, including, but not limited to Emergency Orders of Protection, virtual hearings, and accessing domestic violence shelters.
In March 2020, Congress appropriated $50 million to LSC in the CARES Act to respond to civil legal needs arising out of the pandemic. LSC granted out these funds in three weeks via two separate grant programs.
•$47.1 million distributed to all 132 grantees using a formula based on the distribution of poverty population and aggregated data from the Department of Labor’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims.
•$2.4 million distributed in Telework Capacity Building Grants to 126 grantees that identified specific new expenses to enable staff to serve clients while working remotely.
How many are helped?
In 2019, LSC-funded programs closed nearly 746,000 cases nationwide, involving households with over 1.8 million people.Based on the most recent information from Census Bureau, 53.8 million Americans, or 16.7% of the U.S. population, qualified for legal assistance from LSC grantees in 2019.