What are the most common legal issues low-income and/or homeless clients face? #SFHomelessProject
Talking with Kendra Amick ’13, Economic Justice Attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid
On June 29 and throughout this week, around 70 Bay Area media organizations will be publishing content to highlight the issue of homelessness in the Bay Area. We wanted to look into some of the most common legal issues low-income and/or homeless clients face, so we reached out to alumna Kendra Amick ’13, an Economic Justice Attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid. She spoke to us about her work and her time at UC Hastings.
“Termination or denial of benefits issues are the most common legal issues that I assist clients with since that is my area of expertise,” says Amick.
It’s important to remember that clients who are low-income and/or homeless can have a wide range of legal issues. On one level, homeless and low income clients face the same type of problems as everyone else: dealing with health insurance coverage of treatment and medication, identity theft, personal injury claims, custody and visitation issues.
The most difficult aspect of working with very low income and homeless clients is that generally they have multiple concurrent legal issues, which makes it more difficult for them to escape poverty.
The clients I work mostly live below the federal poverty line. They are generally homeless or at risk of becoming homeless as a result of instability in their income, housing, health or all of the above.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with many remarkable clients, but there is an elderly couple that I am working with that has a particularly compelling story.
The couple is in their 80s and they live in subsidized housing. Their only source of income for many years has been their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. However, their benefits were recently terminated. While we are still in the process of helping the couple with the appeal, we have been able to connect them to local cash assistance, food stamps and also help them maintain their housing and health insurance (which they were also at risk of losing as a result of their SSI benefits being terminated). Thus as a result of BayLegal’s holistic approach to addressing their legal issues, we were able to prevent this elderly couple from having to end up in shelter or on the streets.
In the Bay Area, more than 1.2 million people live in poverty. More than half of these families have a full-time worker in the home. The cost of living in the Bay Area and low-wage jobs take their toll on our communities and neighbors — (www.baylegal.org).
While at UC Hastings I participated in the Social Justice Lawyering Concentration and also took every possible opportunity to develop my skills as a social justice advocate. I volunteered with the General Assistance Advocacy Project (GAAP) all three years, participated in two clinics with the Community Justice Clinics, and interned with nonprofit legal service providers. These experiences at UC Hastings allowed me to become a confident and competent Economic Justice attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid.
More on the SF Homeless Project at https://sfhomelessproject.com
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