Descriptions of 2004 Consumer Law Fellowship Recipients

Clark County Legal Services Program
This program will hire a new attorney as the Consumer Law Fellow, to expand their existing advocacy that challenges the illegal practices of unscrupulous businesses in Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. The Fellow will engage in impact litigation in areas including automobile sales and title pawn cases, payday lending, and other types of predatory lending. Priority will be given to systemic issues amenable to class action treatment, and to address the needs of both low-income African-American and Hispanic consumers.

Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation
The Consumer Law Fellow will expand this program’s anti-predatory lending advocacy on behalf of low-income individuals in rural southern Illinois, with outreach and services targeted to communities with significant African-American populations. An experienced attorney will implement the Homeownership Defense Project in the Murphysboro office, replicating the successful work done by the program in its other more urban offices, including East St. Louis. The program is committed to retaining the position after the two-year period of the Fellowship, and building on the Fellow’s significant expertise on predatory lending issues in a rural office.

Legal Aid of Western Missouri
The Consumer Law Fellow, an attorney with significant consumer law experience, will work with homeowners in specific minority neighborhoods in Kansas City that have been particularly vulnerable to predatory mortgage lending, represent homeowners in challenging the most egregious predatory loans in those neighborhoods, and encourage non-predatory lenders to make loans in the target minority neighborhoods. The damage done by predatory lenders in Kansas City’s low-income minority neighborhoods is some of the worst in the country. The program ultimately plans to expand this effort to other neighborhoods in Kansas City and to other parts of their 40-county service area.

Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati
The Consumer Law Fellow will increase this program’s ability to handle homeowner defense and predatory lending cases, to address scams such as “foreclosure solution” businesses, and to push to correct the lack of state consumer protection statute coverage for mortgage lenders in the state of Ohio. Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows that Ohio was first in the nation in home foreclosures during the first quarter of 2004, with rates for sub-prime loans even worse. Racial minorities in Cincinnati, particularly African-Americans, have been frequent targets of fringe banking practices and scam artists. This program plans for the Fellow becoming a permanent member of the staff and continuing to practice in consumer law and related poverty law issues after completing the two years of the fellowship.

Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands
The Consumer Law Fellow will work out of this program’s Tullahoma office, in an effort to expand representation in the area of consumer law to clients throughout its large rural service area. The Tullahoma office serves counties with a significant African-American population and a growing Hispanic population. The Fellow will specialize exclusively in consumer law cases, including predatory automobile financing. The Legal Aid Society anticipates that this will be a permanent position, as the Fellow develops expertise and produces significant benefits for clients throughout the service area.

Mississippi Center for Justice
This recently created program provides a concerted, statewide capacity for legal advocacy to combat the continuing problems of discrimination and poverty that significantly affect the lives of African-Americans in Mississippi. The Center will address the legal needs of low-income people and communities of color in Mississippi by creating the first consumer law unit in the state in order to make a concentrated effort to provide legal representation to protect vulnerable consumers and to promote economic justice. The Consumer Law Fellow at the Center will lead the development and implementation of its statewide consumer law advocacy efforts, and will initiate litigation, policy advocacy and community initiatives to attack predatory financing and to support the creation of viable alternatives.

New York City Consumer Justice Project
This joint project of South Brooklyn Legal Services (SBLS) and the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP) will expand existing collaborations between these organizations to address an array of non-mortgage-related consumer problems that plague New York City’s low-income communities of color. An experienced staff person will serve as the Consumer Law Fellow, targeting tax refund anticipation loans, high-cost check cashing, payday loans, rent-to-own stores, and unscrupulous money wirers. The programs plan to sustain and even expand the project, with the intent of hiring additional full-time staff.

Texas Civil Rights Project
Because of unregulated rural development and a shortage of low-income housing, more than half of the Mexican-American families in the Rio Grande Valley -- about 500,000 people -- live in unincorporated communities known as colonias, where residents don’t have running water, wastewater treatment systems, electricity, or paved roads. The Consumer Law Fellow will direct the South Texas Colonia Consumer Rights Project, located in the program’s San Juan, Texas office, in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. The project will include a vigorous litigation program, led by the Fellow, with cases developing from systemic issues that emerge from community education meetings or otherwise came to the attention of the Consumer Law Fellow. The program expects to achieve its goal of sustaining the new consumer law position after the two-year fellowship.
Click here to view TCRP's press release about their fellowship.