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Government Benefits Practice

The UR LEGAL SERVICES Government Benefits Practice is designed to help with

We help people facing such issues to get swift assistance from UR LEGAL SERVICES Government Benefits advocates.

Our advocates also assist people with problems related to (UI/SSD/SSI) – Unemployment Insurance, Social Security Disability, and Supplemental Security Income benefits.

Some of our clients are people who have sustained disability from illness or accidents or from losing their job. We give legal assistance to such people to help them get unemployment insurance benefits as well as Social Security Administration Federal disability benefits.

Our advocates engage in city as well as state projects to ensure our clients get fairness and justice in the access to the government benefits system. Our advocates push appeals in Federal and State courts in pursuit of justice and fairness for our clients by collaborating with partners in the entire NYC.

Unemployment Insurance Project

The Unemployment Insurance Project is a mission to help people who are fired from their jobs wrongly. Our advocates at UR LEGAL SERVICES make sure the unemployed persons can get Unemployment Insurance – UI.

This offers people who have had to resign from their jobs due to domestic violence, health issues, wrong dismissal or for charitable causes a much-needed income.

We have advocates who represent such people in their UI cases. They file appeals on their behalf if the need for that arises.

We also collaborate with community-based organizations, policy makers, and elected office holders. We educate leaders, employers, and the New York public about the importance of UI. We also teach them how different UI policies affect the workers in the low-income brackets.

We have worked with the Department of Labor to improve certain things. For instance, they have simplified their UI application forms. This has made it easier for thousands of workers to file claims on their own.

Employment Law & Workers' Rights

Low-income earners face a myriad of problems related to their work such as job loss, medical leave problems, job discrimination, overtime pay issues and delayed/unpaid wages. Our Employment Law and Workers’ Rights programs assist these workers.

They protect workers by offering personal legal representation, affirmative litigation and bringing policy reform to strengthen the workers and job seekers’ rights. Malicious employers can exploit susceptible workers.

Through this practice, we work to improve the rights of vulnerable workers and job seekers. This practice also empowers the workers to fight for a better working wage and conditions.

We also have a Child Care Project, which gives legal support and guidance on things that concern their child-care services as well as licensing.

For legal help, contact us to speak to our multilingual personnel on our hotline number 844-829-2292, anytime from 9.30 to 4.00PM, Monday to Friday.

Need Immigration Help?

If you are an immigrant and cannot afford a private immigration attorney we can
provide free or low cost immigration legal services.

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Taxpayer Assistance

UR LEGAL SERVICES Low-Income Taxpayer Clinics designed to assist taxpayers with New York State and federal income tax conflicts. We also extend this free legal help to other areas such as:

For legal help, contact us to speak to our multilingual personnel on our hotline number 844-829-2292, anytime from 9.30 to 4.00PM, Monday to Friday.

Foreclosure Prevention & Homeowner Rights

Our clients face foreclosure for many reasons such as

To help them, we run foreclosure prevention practice in New York City. Through this program, thousands of New York City residents have received vital legal assistance to fight foreclosure cases filed in courts.

Our foreclosure attorneys have been assisting people in their foreclosure cases filed in courts in The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn. They represent clients in cases challenging unfair lending, fair housing, exploitative mortgage services, and predatory lending violations.

UR LEGAL SERVICES has been offering legal assistance through the Foreclosure Prevention & Homeowner Rights practice from 2018 to date.

Other services that we offer our clients in New York City through this program include court-based clinics, and self-representation assistance. We also help them to negotiate loan modifications, real estate financial issues and others. Our attorneys will analyze your situation carefully to determine the best defense to put up.

Our lawyers have experience defending foreclosure cases, representing clients in real estate issues, and negotiating with the lender to determine the best defense for you depending on the stage of your foreclosure process. They negotiate modifications on house loans and carry out policy advocate work.

Housing & Tenants Rights

Over the years and with the coming of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sustained loss of homes in New York City. This crunch has hit the low wage New Yorkers hardest, following the decades long downward spiral of housing trends.

At UR LEGAL SERVICES, our attorneys help to enhance affordability and safety in housing. We have Housing Units through which we help our clients to avoid evictions. We do the following:

We represent tenant associations and organizations by offering litigation services
We train and educate tenants on their housing rights
We help tenants to get the required house repairs
We give legal help and individual litigation services in courts to help clients avoid evictions. We also give advice and advocacy services
We offer training for housing advocates in NYC
Fight for the upholding of housing subsidies by litigating and offering personal representation in the courts

Know Your Rights: NYCHA Rent Adjustment Process

The process for applying for NYCHA rent adjustment has been simplified, but most people do not know this. Today, NYCHA is bound by deadlines to act to requests for rent adjustments. There is a precedent case for this as shown below:

In the Fields v. Russ – 19-cv-11368 (ER) case, twelve tenants in public housing across New York had sued NYCHA for not reducing the rent of tenants whose income had reduced. The Southern District of New York consented to a settlement on July 23, 2021 in this case.

This new regulation (agreement) became operational on January 23, 2022. The NYCHA is time bound when processing rent adjustment requests. It is also bound to pact on the rent grievances and rent reduction appeals before they can act on the rent delinquency or rent non-payment cases.

This agreement is going to be effective starting January 23, 2022 running for three years. During this time that the settlement will be in operation, NYCHA is required to present timely reports to the claimants as evidence of satisfying their part of the settlement.

Check the page below to see the settlement that the court approved, housing rights resources, and regular updates.

Housing: & Succession Rights

HOLD ONTO YOUR HOME: SUCCESSION RIGHTS IN NEW YORK

Como defender tu casa: Los derechos de sucesiónen Nueva York

UR LEGAL SERVICES has a program called the Manhattan Legal Services. We put up this new program for the benefit of the New York City residents seeking succession rights so that they can keep their rent-adjusted public houses. It is a multi-lingual information center to serve the needs of different New Yorkers speedily and conveniently.

Succession rights enable a remaining tenant of a rent-stabilized apartment in New York to become the new on-record tenant, when the previous tenant on record leaves for good or dies. However, the process of establishing the succession right for the apartment is long and challenging, for the millions of people who live in such apartments in New York City.

Here, we have put together a resource designed to help people understand the eligibility to the succession. It includes fact sheets and videos. Rent-stabilized tenants can access helpful information to avoid risking ineligibility to these apartments. We make these resources available in different languages such as Spanish, Cantonese and English.

Reentry Assistance

Most people with a criminal past find it hard to find or keep a job. Our Reentry program is designed to give people with past criminal histories the opportunity to rejoin the job market.

In this program, we have expert advocates who advise, or represent people looking for certificates of good conduct/relief. They also represent our clients in court for affirmative litigation if they have been discriminated against in the job market due to their past. Our attorneys also negotiate with employers on behalf of our clients.

You can reach our legal help team on our 844-829-2292 hotline Monday to Friday from 9.30AM to 4.00PM and talk with our multilingual legal officers.

Consumer Rights

Our clients include people who are experiencing issues with bankruptcy and consumer debt. We protect vulnerable people, the elderly, immigrants, veterans, people with disabilities from predatory lending practices and debt collection agencies. Here are some of the main things that we protect our vulnerable clients from:

Debt collectors that try to collect non-existent debts
Debt collectors who threaten to withdraw government benefits
Protect clients from being sued maliciously with no proof of debt
Harassment from debtors
Debtors who misrepresent their rights to collect debts
Attempts to collect time-lapsed debts

Our clients also get legal assistance from our expert attorneys in consumer debt lawsuits, preparing affirmative litigation against debt collectors who deploy malicious or illegal debt collection measures.

We also give free consumer rights education and advice to other attorneys and to communities. We do not stop there. We go further to offer public advocacy to help eliminate abuse, malice and unhealthy debt collection practices.

Call us at our multilingual Legal Assistance Hotline on 844-829-2292 to speak to our officers Monday to Friday, from 9.30AM to 4.00PM.

Community & Economic Development

At UR LEGAL SERVICES, we have a Community & Economic Development program. Through the practice, we offer legal assistance to worker cooperatives, small businesses, housing cooperatives, non-profit organizations, neighborhood entrepreneurs, and community-based organizations.

The main reason why we established this practice was to offer legal help, to help grow and protect rent-stabilized housing, increase community-based participation in the control of their neighborhoods and businesses. We also educate the communities on how to prevent wealth drain by controlling their local businesses.

With the coming of the COVID-19 pandemic, our experts have been advising the proprietors of small businesses to help them stay on top of all the updates and developments. They have been offering helpful legal information to help ease the effect of the pandemic on the business finances, employees and operations.

If you are in our area of service, you can reach us on our office hotline number 844-829-2292 and speak with our multilingual experts from 9.30AM to 4.00PM, Monday to Friday.

Elder Law

Part of our clientele is made up of the elderly people in the communities we serve. UR LEGAL SERVICES works with these and other vulnerable members of the community who live on Social Security Retirement and Supplemental Security Income fixed benefits. Our legal experts help by:

Eviction prevention for people in rent-subsidized houses
Helping these vulnerable people live with dignity in their homes
Helping them access long-term home care funded by Medicaid
Offering legal guidance for income preservation and access to public benefits due to them

You can reach our multilingual legal officers through the Legal Assistance hotline number 844-829-2292 Monday to Friday from 9.30AM to 4.00PM.

Disability Advocacy Project

The main objective of our Disability Advocacy Practice is to help vulnerable people with disabilities facing issues with their benefits. Sometimes, these benefits can be discontinued or be denied. In that case, our attorneys’ step in to assist people who cannot access Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits or Disability Insurance (Title II).

Irrespective of the stage of the federal court or appeal court proceedings, our legal experts will step in to offer legal aid to people seeking disability-based Title II and SSI benefits.

To do this effectively, we have The Neighborhood Network. Through this, we have several offices with the mandate to dispense services to people living with disability. We also have a program covering the whole city of New York to discover the administrative obstacles that stand in the way of disability benefits. Using more than 80 community partners that we work with, we also run advocacy works and give education to low income people living with disability.

You can reach our multilingual legal officers through the Legal Assistance hotline number 844-829-2292 Monday to Friday from 9.30AM to 4.00PM.

Access to Education

We have the Education Rights Project through which we have been working to overturn the school-to-prison challenge that many immigrant communities in New York face. Through this program, our attorneys work with families in communities of color and immigrant populations to identify needy cases for school children.

We represent them in disciplinary and special education hearings. We also offer legal services to schoolchildren looking for transfer, with school suspension issues, and even those that need special education in both public or charter schools. We also act on behalf of students with medical needs.

To execute these objectives easier and faster, we do the following:

Push for enhancement in the Individual Education Plans
Guide older, under-credited and average students on how to finish their education, and counseling them on adolescence
Push for improved communication between schools and families
Represent students at manifestation determination reviews (MDR), impartial hearings and suspension hearings

The COVID-19 pandemic affected students with disabilities a lot, especially those from immigrant and communities of color and most could not benefit from remote learning.

We also help students who haven’t been able to get back to mainstream school properly, those who have missed access to academic and technological skills in the past two years or more, and students who come from families whose first language is not English.

From our advocacy work, we have first-hand experience of the effect the pandemic has had on vulnerable families. We have seen the challenges that such families experience when they try to access information and take good care of their children.

We do not offer services to families and communities on a one-on-one basis, but we also try to enhance widespread changes in the Department of Education. We push for the enhancement of special education access, language access, remote learning, and unfair discipline solutions, and checking how trauma affects education.

UR LEGAL SERVICES has education attorneys who are experts at establishing Know Your Rights seminars with parents, students and other education advocates in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. They also create strong partnerships with community-based organizations to better understand the student needs.

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