Legal Services
SBLS provides legal assistance to low-income individuals and groups in each of the areas listed below. Assistance includes legal advice and referral, representation in court and before administrative agencies, and help with community development and education projects. We do legislative and administrative advocacy subject to certain restrictions. We negotiate with landlords about broken refrigerators and argue appeals in high courts.
To find out how to get help with a particular problem, click on the name of the area of law you think is involved.
The Child Care Network Support Project helps home-based child care providers and their networks to start and run their businesses successfully. People seeking help getting child care for their children, please contact Government Benefits.
...more>We help clients deal with debt and banking problems. We focus in particular on frozen bank accounts and student loans.
For foreclosure or mortgage problems, contact our Foreclosure Prevention Project.
...more>We assist clients with unemployment insurance and other employment-related problems. We focus in particular on the re-entry problems of ex-offenders.
...more>We provide comprehensive legal help to victims of domestic violence, including undocumented victims. We are part of the Brooklyn Family Justice Center (FJC) at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, which provides walk-in legal and social services assistance to domestic violence victims.
...more>The Foreclosure Prevention Project provides advice and representation to people threatened with loss of their homes due to predatory lending. In addition to providing advice and litigating cases in court, we are sometimes able to help clients negotiate better financial arrangements.
...more>Through the Single Stop program, we advise clients with respect to public assistance, food stamp, Medicaid, child care, and other benefits problems.
...more>The HIV Project provides legal help to HIV+ people in all the other areas handled by SBLS, plus wills and related matters.
...more>We provide legal advice and representation to tenants with a wide range of housing problems, including non-payment and holdover evictions cases, illegal evictions, and bad conditions. We work with tenants in public housing and receiving Section 8 benefits as well as those in private housing. We represent groups and tenants with disabilities.
...more>The Pension Benefits Unit is the home of the Mid-Atlantic Pension Counseling Project, which was formerly part of Legal Services for the Elderly. The project provides information and counseling to workers and their dependents who are having difficulty finding out about pension benefits that might be owed to them or who believe that they might not be receiving benefits that are owed to them
...more>Through the Single Stop program, SBLS helps parents and students get appropriate special education services.
...more>The Supplemental Security Income Unit helps people get SSI benefits. It also assists clients with disabilities get access to transportation and other public facilities.
...more>The Brooklyn Low-Income Tax Clinic helps resolve tax problems, especially those involving the Earned Income Tax Credit.
...more>
