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PUBLIC TESTIMONY

Testimony by Bill Bryan, Director of Civil Justice Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services

4:51:12

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122 sec

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Bill Bryan from Brooklyn Defender Services testified about the importance of legal services programs and preventative legal assistance. He emphasized how early intervention can resolve or avoid legal issues, particularly in cases involving public benefits and housing for families affected by the criminal, family, and immigration legal systems.

Highlighted the impact of brief advice and early intervention in avoiding future legal problems
Provided an example of how they help families maintain housing benefits when children are temporarily removed from care
Requested renewal of the Speaker's Initiative funding to continue providing preventative legal assistance

Bill Bryan

4:51:12

Hi.

4:51:13

My name is Bill Bryan.

4:51:14

I'm the director of the civil justice practice of Brooklyn Defender Services.

4:51:17

Thank you to the committee and chair Ayalla for the opportunity to testify today and for your continued support of legal services programs like ours.

4:51:24

BDS represents more than 23,000 people each year whose lives are impacted by the criminal, family, and immigration legal systems.

4:51:31

Our civil practice works to minimize the consequences of this system involvement and provides legal and social work support to ensure our clients keep their jobs, stay in their homes, and acquire essential benefits and services.

4:51:43

In these hearings we often focus on impactful individual stories highlighting the extreme challenges our clients face and the complex litigation our staff engage in to resolve them.

4:51:51

But I also wanna focus on examples where brief advice or early intervention can resolve or avoid a legal issue as it's here that the council funding we rely on truly has an impact allowing us to intervene when answering today's legal questions can avoid tomorrow's legal problems.

4:52:05

For example, working with clients of our family practice we routinely avoid public benefits issues and non payment proceedings for families whose children are temporarily removed from their care by ensuring rental assistance and housing voucher budgets remain unaffected by changes in household size.

4:52:19

Without intervention children are often removed from budgets resulting in rent not being paid and eventually a non payment proceeding is being filed often before the family is even aware that there's an issue.

4:52:28

So in one version of this story we have a best case scenario being connected with a housing attorney through a right to counsel program who can hopefully identify the cause of the reduction, work with DSS to get arrears paid, and discontinue the case to avoid eviction.

4:52:41

But in another we can preemptively avoid a need for housing representation by ensuring the family is aware of their right to keep their children on their budget and advocating with HRA to resolve erroneous reductions.

4:52:50

So we're grateful to Speaker Adams and the Council for the Speaker's Initiative funding that allows us the flexibility to provide this type of preventative legal assistance, and we ask that this funding be renewed.

4:52:59

The written testimony that I'll submit will provide further details on the program initiative and discretionary funding requests that we're making to ensure we can continue to do this work.

4:53:07

So we thank the committee for the opportunity today and for your continued support, of our clients, their families, and the communities we all represent.

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Testimony by Jack Boyle, Staff Attorney at Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, on Right to Counsel Housing Practice

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Testimony by Keriann Pauls, Interim Executive Director of Take Root Justice