- Residents of Los Angeles County’s poorest areas to get help in keeping their homes, By Victoria Kim, May 2, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “Thousands of residents in Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods will get new legal help in fighting high-stakes eviction cases involving slumlords and foreclosures under a pilot project approved by the state’s judicial leaders Friday. The new Eviction Legal Assistance Center at Los Angeles County Superior Court’s downtown civil courthouse will provide legal representation to about 15,000 people facing eviction over three years, according to legal aid groups, which will be jointly running the center…”
- State’s chief judge pledges more aid for poor in courts, By Thomas Kaplan, May 2, 2011, New York Times: “New York’s chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, on Monday called the state’s routine failure to provide lawyers for poor criminal defendants being arraigned in local courts a problem that ‘can no longer be tolerated,’ and pledged to remedy the situation within a year. Judge Lippman, in a speech at the State Court of Appeals, said too many New Yorkers were needlessly spending nights in jail after appearing without legal counsel at criminal arraignments in small-town and village courthouses. He vowed that the state would spend $10 million in an effort to improve the availability of legal defense provided to the poor…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty