NHLA Priorities

OVERVIEW OF THE PRIORITIES PROCESS

NHLA chooses cases that are likely to have the most positive effect on both the individual client and on others with the same legal problem. NHLA does not have the resources to accept all applicants for our legal services even within the priority areas we have adopted. To best serve our clients, we are continuously reassessing our priorities and looking to identify issues that affect low-income and elderly residents of New Hampshire.

Priorities
These are the current NHLA program priorities, listed in alphabetical order.

Benefits
NHLA focuses its efforts on the following benefits issues:

• Disability cases (Social Security, SSI, SSDI, and APTD).
• Food stamps.
• Local welfare.
• Medicaid.
• Minimum wage improvement and policy.
• TANF.
• Unemployment compensation.
• Public utilities (electricity, fuel assistance, gas, telephone).

Children's Dental Health
Children's Dental Health  Monitoring our State's compliance with a federal class action consent decree entered in 2004 to improve the Medicaid dental program for children. Contact: Kay Drought 1-800-334-3135, extension 2503.

Domestic Violence
NHLA partners with the New Hampshire Pro Bono program, the Legal Advice and Referral Center and the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. NHLA represents individual victims of domestic violence, especially in rural areas of the state:

• Seek both immediate and permanent restraining orders and other relief.
• Obtain and enforce child support orders.
• Contested custody and divorce cases.
• Legislative advocacy.

Housing
NHLA focuses its efforts on the following housing issues:

• Discrimination on the basis of age, color, marital status, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, familial status, and disability.
• Mortgage foreclosures.
• Homeless emergencies.
• Local welfare cases involving rent and mortgage payments.
• Manufactured housing (mobile home) evictions, rent increases, and other issues.
• Property tax problems.
• Public and subsidized housing tenant evictions, voucher terminations and access.
• Zoning and other land use regulations that discourage developers from building affordable housing.

Our Fair Housing Project may be reached at:  1-800-921-1115

Immigrant Rights
NHLA represents vulnerable immigrant clients subject to exploitation who are denied equal access to services and benefits. 

Inmate Representation
NHLA will continue to enforce inmates' rights to mental health care and the educational/vocational training that will allow inmates to lead productive lives when they leave prison.

Seniors
NHLA focuses on the following elder issues:

• Assisted living facility transfers or discharges.
• Health care and public benefits, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Home and Community Based Care program.
• Nursing home transfers or discharges.
• Property tax problems.
• Bankruptcies.
• Debtor harassment cases.
• Periodic payments cases: district court collection cases where someone has been ordered to pay periodic payments even though his or her only income is Social Security.
• Predatory lending cases where low-income consumers have lost their home equity.
• Senior financial exploitation.

Our Senior Law Project may be reached at:
1-888-353-9944
624-6000 (Manchester)
TTY 7-1-1 or 1-800-735-2964

Youth Law Project
The Youth Law Project (YLP) works with children and teenagers who are facing delinquency or CHINS petitions, as well as those who are at-risk of having such petitions filed against them. The YLP seeks to get these young people the educational, health, mental health, and other services necessary to stay in their homes and communities and out of the juvenile justice system.