TESTIMONY
Raun Rasmussen, Executive Director of Legal Services NYC, on Funding and Impact of Civil Legal Services for Low-Income New Yorkers
4:16:07
·
150 sec
Raun Rasmussen advocates for increased funding to support Legal Services NYC's efforts in providing civil legal services to low-income New Yorkers and highlights the organization's key initiatives.
- Rasmussen requests an increase in funding to $7,000,000 for fiscal year 25 to support low-income legal services, and a restoration of $150,000 for the Veterans Justice Project.
- He emphasizes the critical role of legal services in ensuring shelter, safety from domestic violence, stable income, access to high-quality education, and healthcare.
- Rasmussen highlights the challenges faced by New York City's children during the pandemic and asks for $500,000 to support the Access to Education Project for kids with special needs.
- The testimony mentions the significant underfunding of legal services, including the need to raise an additional $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 annually for eviction and prevention services due to low case rates.
Raun Rasmussen
4:16:07
My name is Ron Rasmussen, and I'm the Executive Director of Legal Services and my see.
4:16:11
Our staff of nearly 700 fights for justice for low income New Yorkers by providing free civil legal services to more than 110,000 New Yorkers every year.
4:16:21
Matt Desmond, the Harvard sociologist who wrote evicted, stated without shelter, everything falls apart.
4:16:27
But we know that it's also true that without safety from domestic violence, without a sufficient stable income, and without a high quality education and access to health care, everything else falls apart.
4:16:39
Your funding for legal services for Low Income New Yorkers allows us to help our clients hold their lives together in all the ways that are so critical.
4:16:46
We ask that you increase that funding in fiscal year 25 to $7,000,000 for the organizations that provide those services.
4:16:54
We also ask that you restore funding for legal services NYC's veterans justice project to a $150,000.
4:17:01
A return to fiscal year 2020 funding.
4:17:04
That project began in November 2011 and since time, we've helped thousands of veterans and their families stabilize their homes and incomes.
4:17:13
New York City's children were hit hardest the pandemic, and we ask you to provide $500,000 to support our access to education project, which will help kids with special needs and disabilities provide language access for students and their parents, and we'll work with the schools to implement restorative healing programs so that children who are victims of sexual harassment or violence in the schools can be responded to with measures that are supportive and not punitive.
4:17:37
Finally, As we testified last year, both the state and the city are dramatically underfunding the work that we do by tens of 1,000,000 of dollars annually.
4:17:46
Legal Services NYC, for example, gets roughly $30,000,000 to provide eviction and prevention services to the city.
4:17:52
But because the case rate is low, we need to raise an additional $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 every year to hire sufficient staff to do the work that the contracts require.
4:18:02
And that's just one underfunded contract.
4:18:05
We can't keep up.
4:18:07
You've been our partner for decades in working to meet the needs of all New Yorkers.
4:18:12
Thanks for your help now to make sure that we're fairly paid for the work that we do to help low income New Yorkers get and keep the benefits and services they need and deserve.
4:18:21
And we want I just wanna echo all of the stories that you heard about Passport and the challenges that we have had as well in trying to keep up, trying to make payroll.
4:18:32
So thank you for your support in helping to get those issues resolved.
