NLSP CAN HELP VETERANS

To get legal help from NLSP, you must first talk to an NLSP intake specialist, who will check eligibility. Click here for intake hours and locations. If you aren’t sure if your problem fits these categories, call 202-832-NLSP.
 
The Veterans Legal Assistance Project will handle all those areas that NLSP already covers: (e.g., landlord tenant, family law) with the addition of:
  • Veterans Affairs Disability Compensation Benefits,
  • Select Veterans Affairs benefits (i.e., Post 9/11 GI Bill) on a case-by-case basis
  • Military discharge upgrades.

 

ABOUT THE VETERANS LEGAL ASSISTANCE PROJECT

The Veterans Legal Assistance Project (VLAP) provides free civil legal assistance to low-income veterans in the DC region. Often homeless and disabled, these veterans lack the most basic essentials: safe and affordable housing, healthcare, subsistence income or a job and protection from exploitation or violence. Many of their problems have legal dimensions and can be alleviated or resolved with the help of a lawyer.

Launched in 2015 in response to a fragmented and inadequate network of legal assistance for destitute veterans, the VLAP provides a gateway to legal and other services for this highly vulnerable population. An NLSP Staff attorney serves as the VLAP Project Manager. The project is overseen by the Capital Area Veterans Legal Services Collaborative, a group of legal services providers and law firms in the DC area who seek to improve the accessibility, scope and delivery of effective, free civil legal services to homeless and low-income veterans.

For more information about the veterans project and the Collaborative: VLAP PowerPoint

 

SERVING THOSE WHO SERVED: PRO BONO OPPORTUNITIES

Learn about the VLAP Pro Bono Model. Questions about outreach, partnerships and pro bono opportunities can be sent to veterans.project@nlsp.org.


Success Story- Mr. Edwards

Larry Edwards came to NLSP in January of 2014, the coldest month DC had seen in decades. He and his apartment-mate had lost heat in their unit. They went without heat for 12 days before finding that their landlord had terminated their housing without legal process. Edwards, an Army veteran, and his apartment-mate, an Air Force veteran, had obtained housing through an independent community residence facility that contracted with the city. Testimony credited by the court revealed that the contractor had a pattern of seeking vulnerable veterans to house for a short time before evicting them without legal process. Edwards’ attorneys were able to win a $122,000 judgment against the contractor.

See the Washington Post article about Mr. Edwards’s experience: The confounding story of the disabled veterans who went weeks in winter without heat — and then were evicted 

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