|
|
|
NEWS AND STORIES |
|
ALAS Attorney Meets with On January 31, 2008, the Home Defense Program’s Karen Brown met with Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Federal Reserve Governor, Randall Kroszner, regarding proposed amendments to the FRB’s regulation of mortgage loans. In response to the FRB’s request for public comment on the proposal, the National Consumer Law Center requested a meeting, and Chairman Bernanke agreed. Karen accompanied three NCLC attorneys (Elizabeth Renuart, Alys Cohen, and Diane Thompson) and another legal services attorney (Jessica Attie of South Brooklyn Legal Services) to the meeting. Karen described the devastating foreclosure crisis in the metropolitan Atlanta area, showing the governors the phonebook-sized listing of the 7,000 families facing foreclosures in the metro-Atlanta area in February. She explained that a high percentage of foreclosures involve mortgage loans made in the past year or two years, many of them adjustable rate mortgages where the borrower could not afford the initial teaser rate. Karen told the stories of four ALAS clients (seniors and disabled homeowners on low, fixed incomes) to whom major national banks and mortgage lenders knowingly made mortgage loans without regard to the borrower’s ability to pay the loans. Karen and the other consumer advocates made recommendations about how the FRB could strengthen its proposal to more effectively protect homeowners from predatory lending practices. Bernanke and Kroszner spent more than an hour with the group. Chairman Bernanke listened, was engaged, asked questions, and thanked the advocates for their comments. After the public comment period closes in March, the FRB will review all comments before issuing a final regulation.
The Atlanta Tornado On March 14, 2008, an EF2 tornado touched down in the Vine City neighborhood of Atlanta, just west of downtown Atlanta, then moved through downtown and through the Cabbagetown community, causing widespread damage, and one death. Several Atlanta landmarks were damaged, some heavily, by the storm. The 2008 SEC Men's Basketball Tournament at the Georgia Dome was interrupted. Also affected were the CNN Center, Georgia World Congress Center, Philips Arena (during an Atlanta Hawks game), and Georgia Pacific. The Omni Hotel and the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel were evacuated after many windows were blown out. The Atlanta Daily World (the nation's first black-owned daily newspaper), the Equitable Building (which houses the local office of Congressman John Lewis), Centennial Olympic Park and historic Oakland Cemetery were also damaged. When Executive Director, Steve Gottlieb, came downtown the morning after the storm to check the damage, he was surprised to find the Saturday Attorney Program operating as usual.
Atlanta Legal Aid suffered minor damage: a window in one stairwell and a window in Executive Director Steve Gottlieb's office were broken.
| Just Another Day At Legal Aid Some of our cases make the evening news; sometimes you read about us in the "Atlanta Journal Constitution." Most days, you don't know what a legal aid attorney has done for someone in your community. There are a million stories in this city; these are a few of them. Landlord/Tenant Ms. KC lives in an Atlanta apartment with her three young girls, ages nine, eight and two. Her relationship with the two-year-old's father, Mr. B, was over, but the two of them had worked out visitation arrangements. He was not to come to her apartment, but would always pick up the child in a public place. One evening the older children's father was visiting the family when Mr. B called and wanted to come to her apartment to visit the child. She said he couldn't come, but he ignored her. When he got to the apartment, Ms. KC would not let him in, and he became enraged, screaming and kicking at the door. He was able to kick the door off the hinges, splintering the door and part of the frame. When he entered the apartment, the older children's father confronted him, and he ran away. He was later arrested. The door had to be completely replaced and cost over $700. Ms. KC's landlord attempted to make her pay for the repair because a "guest" in her home had caused the damage. Ms. KC knew that under the terms of her lease, she was not responsible, and she refused to sign a repayment agreement. The landlord then obtained an eviction warrant for non-payment. At that point, Ms. KC came to Legal Aid, and we contacted the apartment manager's attorney. They conceded that she did not owe the money, and the eviction was dropped. The landlord wasn't quite through; he refiled the eviction warrant stating that Ms. KC's "guest" had committed criminal activity. Legal Aid's attorney again stepped in and argued that it was a criminal, and not a guest who had caused the damage. Ms. KC expects that the landlord will try to force Mr. B to pay for the damage to the door, just as soon as he gets out of jail. Section 8 Mr. FW is a severely mentally disabled person living in Section 8 housing. His landlord tried to evict him because he did not maintain his home clean enough to pass a housing quality standards inspection. Mr. FW had the right, based on federal regulations and his lease, to have an informal conference to discuss his termination before the landlord could file an eviction. He asked to have his conference; the landlord refused and filed an eviction. Legal Aid helped Mr. FW file an answer and a claim for discrimination based on the Fair Housing Act. We then filed a Motion to Dismiss based on the landlord's refusal to provide an informal conference. The Superior Court ordered that the landlord denied Mr. FW due process by refusing to give him an informal conference and dismissed the eviction. Southside Community Education Lawyers from the Southside office of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society speak at the Sullivan Center three times a month. The Sullivan Center offers financial assistance to qualified applicants, and in return, recipients go to weekly classes for four weeks to learn how to manage their finances and to obtain information on their basic rights and responsibilities. Southside lawyers do a thirty to forty-five minute presentation on the rights and responsibilities of tenants. We explain what responsibilities tenants have, what to do if a landlord fails to make repairs, security deposits, and what rights they have during the eviction process. The classes are usually interactive with lots of questions and input. The folks who take the classes are always very appreciative. Recently, an individual called Legal Aid for help with a problem she was having with her landlord. She told her lawyer all the steps she had taken, and her lawyer said that she had already taken the first steps he would have advised. She said that she had learned what to do at the Sullivan Center at one of these community education events. HeLP Our Health Law Partnership recently helped a woman, "Ms. IH," when her child's father took the child to Ecuador and said that he would not return her. The father, Mr. H, had earlier given the mother a paper to sign in English (although she was illiterate in any language) telling her that it was permission for his sister to travel with the child to visit their families in Ecuador. Ms. IH's sister-in-law took the little girl to Ecuador in late August. Once they arrived, Mr. H's mother picked them up at the airport but would not let Ms. IH's mother see her. A couple of weeks later, Mr. H traveled to Ecuador. Once there, he told Ms. IH that neither he nor the baby were going to come back. She learned then that her child's father and the man she thought was her husband, was married to a woman in Ecuador, and that the papers she had signed actually gave sole custody of the child to Mr. H. Mr. H threatened that if Ms. IH made any legal move to get the child back, he would take the child and move to Spain, where his wife has a work permit and could get him into the country as her spouse. Our HeLP lawyers asked Nelson Mullins for assistance with this international problem, and their immigration section volunteered their expertise. Fortunately, Ms. IH had a great deal of evidence that the US was the child's normal home: birth certificate, US Passport, copies of immunization records, video of birthday parties, etc. The team at Nelson Mullins filed a Hague Convention petition and a number of other pleadings here and found volunteer counsel in Ecuador. A judge here signed an order compelling the child's return. The local counsel took the order to the court in Ecuador and the judge there domesticated the order, (an action our State Department says is very unusual, almost unprecedented.) The father tried twice to leave the country; however, Nelson Mullins had made the Spanish authorities aware of the issue, and Mr. H was not able to leave Ecuador with the child. The authorities in Ecuador were able to take the child away from Mr. H and his family, and then the Ecuadorian vice-consul personally escorted the child back to the US. |
