TESTIMONY
Lisa Rivera, President and CEO, New York Legal Assistance Group, on the Funding Crisis in Legal and Social Services
6:27:54
·
4 min
Lisa Rivera outlines the financial challenges facing legal and social services, advocating for increased investment in the FY 25 budget.
- Rivera highlights the New York Legal Assistance Group's impact in serving over 130,000 individuals in 2023, a record number for the organization.
- She emphasizes the rising demand for services, particularly in housing, access to benefits, shelter advocacy, and immigration.
- Rivera identifies a management crisis in funding and stresses the importance of redefining the crisis beyond just numerical overwhelm.
- Reveals that systemic obstacles in institutions are key challenges their clients face in achieving justice.
- Rivera closes by urging the city to enhance investment in civil legal services and social services to help non-profits meet community needs effectively.
Lisa Rivera
6:27:54
Hello.
6:27:55
Good afternoon.
6:27:56
Thank you, Chair Brandon, Deputy Speaker Ayala, council members and staff.
6:28:01
Appreciate the opportunity to speak about legal services.
6:28:04
As it relates to the FY 25 preliminary budget.
6:28:07
My name is Lisa Rivera, and I'm the President and CEO of the New York Legal Assistance Group, otherwise known as NILEG.
6:28:13
Nylon staff or amongst many providers doing the essential work to support our communities, work that in many instances, as you all know, exist because their systemic obstacles in all the institutions that our clients encounter to achieve justice.
6:28:27
In 2023, we impacted the lives of more than a 100 30,000 individuals, the highest number in our 34 year history as an organization.
6:28:35
That's an increase of over 15,000 that we served in the prior year.
6:28:40
I share this because the numbers reflect an ever increasing need amongst the communities we serve, especially in housing, access to benefits, shelter advocacy, and immigration.
6:28:49
That's why today I'm asking for the city to increase the investment in critical civil and legal cert civil legal services and social services.
6:28:57
That are designed to help our clients because they are increasingly becoming difficult to access.
6:29:02
We've heard the word crisis thrown around quite a bit lately.
6:29:05
A migrant crisis being the most consistent mention, and suffice to say non profit providers have a rich history of responding to a crisis.
6:29:13
We've created innovative expert adoptable programming even during budget shortfalls to do even more with fewer resources because it is our mission to meet the boost most basic needs of our clients so that they can thrive and live a life with dignity.
6:29:26
That said amid the increasing needs of those seeking our services, including our new neighbors, The fact is is that we feel it's the most utmost importance to properly define the crisis before us.
6:29:37
It's not a crisis of people overwhelming systems.
6:29:40
But a crisis of management divesting from the very services that exist to confront these systems, their inequities, their injustices, and thus their inefficiencies.
6:29:50
The nonprofit sector has reached a tipping point.
6:29:53
NILEX continued ability to respond to the need and recruit staff, retain them, pay our advocates' fair wages, It's all at risk because of chronic underfunding.
6:30:02
I've testified about this before, but a budget reflects values.
6:30:06
Nonprofit stand ready to meet New Yorkers' knees, but instead of maximizing our connections to communities and our expertise, the city has cut successful programs and left us as uncertain about what type of programs we will have after reductions.
6:30:18
We can only continue to do our work at the necessary volume, pace, and level of expertise with significantly increased investments in legal and social services that NILEG and organizations like us can provide.
6:30:30
Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today, and I'm happy answer any questions.
Justin L. Brannan
6:30:36
How much is Nylon currently owned by the city for services rendered?
Lisa Rivera
6:30:42
As of last count throughout two and a half weeks ago, we had invoices outstanding somewhere around 6,000,000.
Justin L. Brannan
6:30:51
So you have about $6,000,000 in outstanding invoices.
6:30:55
And how long have you been carrying that?
Lisa Rivera
6:30:57
We have been unable to invoice properly since December.
6:31:00
Okay.
Justin L. Brannan
6:31:05
Yeah.
Gale Brewer
6:31:07
Just the same question.
6:31:08
In other words, is this been a problem in the past, or is this something that is newly created?
Diana Ayala
6:31:14
It's a little bit of both,
Lisa Rivera
6:31:16
but this is a newly created issue.
6:31:17
And so, you know, you've heard the nonprofit sector speaking a lot about late contract registrations.
6:31:23
Onerous, like uploading of documents and sort of repetitive measures.
6:31:27
And we have full time staff really to upload documents at this point at our organization.
6:31:33
The city moved to a new system passport, which many of us are familiar as providers to sort of streamline efforts.
6:31:40
And so while that is definitely appreciated, because we spend a lot of time trying to obtain the money for the services that we provide, it wasn't ready.
6:31:50
The program, the SIS system was not ready.
6:31:52
In December, it rolled over.
6:31:54
We were asked not to upload any invoices into the system.
6:31:59
It's not unusual for us not to be paid on time.
6:32:02
So it was not alarming at that point, but 3 months later without the inability to upload invoices at this point, is requiring agencies like mine to take out loans to make payroll.
6:32:13
We are similarly situated across the board in terms of social and legal services across the city with issue as well.
Gale Brewer
6:32:20
Thank you very much.
Justin L. Brannan
6:32:25
Thank you, Lisa.
Lisa Rivera
6:32:26
Thank you.
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