Blog / Community Lawyering Project

Earlier this year, Bread for the City community members testified to how DCRA’s inadequate enforcement led to residents living in poor conditions. Through our organizing to hold DCRA accountable to its mission, we’ve developed demands for DC council members and Mayor Bowser.

Yesterday, the DC Council unanimously passed the Fair Criminal Record Screening for Housing Act (“Housing Ban the Box”) – an extension of the Employment Ban the Box law that Bread for the City advocates and clients helped to pass in 2014.

For 42 years, Bread for the City has delivered poverty-relief services in the District of Columbia. For the last 25 years, a key part of that relief has been given through legal services.

In the 1990s the social services staff noticed that many of their clients were routinely being denied disability benefits. What started as an ad-hoc initiative to try and help more clients burgeoned into the current iteration of the legal clinic, where attorneys assist clients not only on disability benefits but also in the areas of public benefits, family law and domestic violence, and housing law.

If you follow us at Bread for the City, you know that last June, the DC City council passed the Fair Criminal Record Screening Act (also known as “Ban the Box”). This law protects returning citizens from discrimination from employers. It was passed thanks to the tireless efforts of community members, returning citizens, organizations around the city, and Bread for the City’s Community Lawyering Project (including our own Aja Taylor, who won an award for her efforts!).