Civil Track – Building and Preserving Healthy Communities in a Time of Change

With the presidential election bringing a new administration, the civil legal aid community needs to be poised for change. Communities across the nation are facing concerns around healthcare, the mortgage foreclosure crisis, and increasing numbers of homelessness particularly among veterans. These concerns are magnified when considering their effects on low-income people.

Poor people have become targets of predatory lending practices nationwide that have resulted in 1 out of every 12 subprime mortgages that will go to foreclosure, compared to 1 in 100 for the prime market. This same population also sees record numbers with no health insurance coverage. According to the U.S. Census data, 9.2 million poor people had no health insurance in 2000, with 2.5 million poor children without health insurance. Our members of the armed services are returning home from war only to live on the streets. The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that more than a half million veterans are homeless over the course of a year and these numbers are rising. While these statistics are sobering, change is on the horizon.