REAL PEOPLE: REAL CASES

          New Orleans Legal Assistance provides low-income persons with access to the justice system–access they would otherwise be denied because of their poverty. The heart of NOLAC’s work lies in helping people with day-to-day legal problems. Many of NOLAC’s cases involve efforts to save homes, protect families from abuse or secure survival income for deserted families, the disabled or the unemployed. Many clients have no place else to turn for help. The following client stories show how NOLAC helps people in need who struggle against poverty or injustice:

          ●A disabled, homebound and welfare-dependent woman was advised by her doctors that she would die without surgery. Medicaid refused to approve the surgery-effectively condemning her to death. We won an appeal which required Medicaid to pay for the surgery. Our client is much better now and is working as a nursing assistant.

          ●Unfed children were missing school and afraid for their very lives because their mother kept them in a crack house. We helped a caring adult relative obtain permanent custody and remove them from their mother’s crack house.

          ● A 72 year old disabled man, was threatened with eviction when his 91 year old mother died. The loss of his mother’s income meant that he could no longer afford the rent on their home. NOLAC helped him acquire additional income by handling his mother’s succession and getting Social Security and food stamp benefits for him. NOLAC’s help enabled him to relocate to more affordable housing before he became homeless.

          ● Four years after a woman fled her abusive husband, she was still stalked by him. Her husband located her home, forced entry, destroyed her furniture, punched holes in the wall and refused to leave. NOLAC put an end to this nightmarish terror by helping her obtain a divorce, permanent injunction, and sole custody of her child with no visitation for her husband.

          ● A was seven months pregnant when her landlady cut off her utilities in order to force her out. A had fully paid her rent. Later, the landlady locked A out and began moving her furniture from the apartment. NOLAC had A’s utilities and access restored and obtained damages for A’s unlawful eviction. The court dismissed the landlady’s subsequent eviction lawsuit as without merit.

          ●B worked for an apartment complex that was a hotbed of drug dealing. B reported the drug dealing to his employer. Somehow, word of B’s complaint leaked back to the drug dealers. They then set the rental office on fire and threatened B with a gun, saying they knew where he lived and that he had told the owner about them.

           Faced with this violence, B resigned his job and applied for unemployment compensation. Both the agency and the judge denied B’s claim because they found that

the likelihood of becoming a murder victim was not “good cause” for leaving the job. We

appealed this denial and won unemployment compensation which allowed B to search for safer work.