HOUSING
NHLA advocates represent and advise clients in many different areas of housing including:
• Public housing evictions
• Public housing voucher terminations
• Other Public and federally funded housing issues
• Mortgage foreclosure and chapter 13 bankruptcy
• Property Taxes
• Poor housing conditions
• Mobile home park issues and evictions
• Fair Housing and housing discrimination complaints
• Housing accessibility issues for persons with mobility disabilities
If you need help with a housing issue, contact the NHLA office nearest you.
Read our Success Stories
NHLA’s Housing Projects
NHLA focuses its efforts on a variety of housing issues with its Homeless Advocacy Project and its Housing Justice Project.
NHLA helps individuals and families in emergency situations who are either currently without shelter or are at imminent risk of becoming homeless. HAP's top priority is homelessness prevention focusing on eviction defense, especially for low-income and disabled residents of public housing and federally assisted private housing who cannot afford private market-rate housing. HAP also provides community education and legal guidance within the homeless shelter and supportive service network.
Housing Justice Project (HJP)
NHLA attorneys and paralegals specialize in promoting equal access to housing for NHLA clients by working on preserving their housing by eviction defense work in subsidized housing, manufactured housing parks and some private housing as well. In addition, the HJP fights housing discrimination by investigating complaints of discrimination involving any of the ten protected classes in NH, and by providing full legal representation to enforce fair housing laws. The HJP also does a considerable amount of community outreach to tenants, housing providers and social service agencies about tenants’ rights and general fair housing law. The HJP is focusing on the rapidly growing minority, immigrant, and refugee communities in Manchester and Nashua, and works closely with local public and private organizations that assist these particularly vulnerable populations.
Success Stories
Homeless advocacy in action: NHLA helps a single mom maintain her subsidized housing.
A single mom contacted NHLA in December, 2007, to request assistance in preventing an eviction from her apartment for an unauthorized tenant. The client has assistance to pay for this apartment for herself and her young son with a Section 8 voucher from the local housing authority. If she were evicted from her apartment for this reason, there was a high probability that she would also lose her voucher. A NHLA attorney assisted this client by negotiating on her behalf with the housing provider to offer sufficient evidence to overcome the allegation that she had an unauthorized additional tenant and the eviction was stopped – not only saving this woman’s apartment but also her housing assistance without which she would not be able to afford a market rate rent.
Housing advocacy in action: NHLA helps a disabled woman keep her public housing by stopping an eviction.
A single woman with disabilities, who lives in public housing, received a free mattress from a local charitable foundation. Unfortunately this mattress contained bed bugs. The client tried to comply with the housing authority’s request to replace many of her belongings – which was extremely difficult for someone living on a very low fixed disability income – and prepare her apartment for fumigation, but still the problem persisted. The housing authority took the position that the problem was not going away because the client was not doing enough to comply with their extermination plan. A NHLA attorney assisted this client by representing her at an administrative agency hearing with the housing authority and arguing that she had in fact done her utmost to comply and help alleviate the problem, and that exterminating bed bugs is an extremely difficult and long process and not a basis for eviction in this case. The housing authority agreed and stopped the eviction action against this woman – and eventually the bed bug problem was alleviated in her apartment.
Funders:
Campaign for Legal Services
City of Manchester
City of Nashua
City of Portsmouth
City of Rochester
IOLTA program of New Hampshire Bar Foundation
NH Housing Finance Authority
US Department of Housing and Urban Development
United Way
Pamphlets
Having trouble paying for property taxes?
Mobile Home Park - English
English language brochure
