Legal
Access to justice shouldn’t depend on your income.
Bread for the City’s Legal Clinic provides advice and representation in three main areas to DC residents living with low-incomes:
HOUSING LAW: helping tenants in landlord-tenant and subsidized housing cases.
IMMIGRATION LAW: helping noncitizens in a variety of immigration legal matters, including applications for work permits, green cards, asylum, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), citizenship, and a variety of other humanitarian benefits for victims of domestic violence, child abuse, or violent crimes , such as U-visa, T-visas, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS).
FAMILY LAW: helping survivors of domestic violence in Civil Protection Order and family law cases (like custody and divorce) and helping custodial and non-custodial parents in child support cases.
PUBLIC BENEFITS LAW: helping individuals facing problems with getting or keeping public benefits, like TANF, Food Stamps, and Medicaid.
Get legal help by calling (202) 386-7616
Please leave a voice message about your legal issue. Someone from our Legal On-Call team will call back within 48 hours to help figure out the best legal resource for the matter.
If you’re having a Landlord-Tenant issue, call (202) 780-2575. Bread for the City attorneys, along with other legal services providers, staff that phone line.
Legal Impact Stats
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Access to justice should not be limited by one’s ability to pay for help. Unfortunately, 86% of low-income households in the United States receive little or no help with civil legal challenges.
With Bread for the City’s help, individuals…
- Receive same-day advice and representation in court during critical stages of child support cases,
- Receive legal services while escaping domestic violence,
- Receive same-day advice and representation when facing eviction or loss of a housing subsidy,
- Overcome barriers in getting a government-issued ID, and
- Organize to achieve legal solutions to effect systemic change on community-identified issues.
Movement Lawyering Practice
The Movement Lawyering Practice leverages the law to support Black and brown people who are organizing for systemic and transformative social change in D.C. We believe change is transformative when it:
- Improves the material conditions of people’s lives
- Affirms people’s sense of their power, and
- Increases community power*
As the Movement Lawyering Practice, our role is to provide legal support to groups that are also committed to transformative social change. Here’s our commitment to you:
- We are committed to moving at the speed of trust by taking the time to listen to the ideas of our clients and community actively.
- We are committed to centering and elevating the voices of community members and organizers.
- We are committed to taking direction from community members closest to the issue they are organizing around.
*Thanks to the amazing Movement Law Lab for this framework
Legal Clinic Blog
Ensuring Efficiency and Accountability: Bread for the City’s Testimony on DHS Public Benefits Management
Zack Mason, Medical-Legal Partnership Staff Attorney at Bread for the City, testifies before the DC Council on the Department of Human Services’ improvements in public benefits management while urging continued efficiency and accountability to prevent delays that burden clients and the Office of Administrative Hearings.
Protecting DC’s Immigrant Communities: Know Your Rights and How to Prepare
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