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STEUBENVILLE -- Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio stands to lose $425,000 in federal funding for fair housing initiatives if recent budget cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency stand up in court.
LASCO Advocacy Director Kristen Lewis said a class action lawsuit has already been filed in Massachusetts on behalf of 60 fair housing groups whose grants were "abruptly terminated" by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and DOGE on Feb. 27. While LASCO is not named in the suit, Lewis said a positive ruling would restore funding to it and more than 60 other fair housing groups whose grants were terminated.
"We did not anticipate having grants canceled in the middle of a contract," said Lewis, who runs LASCO's Fair Housing Center. "To my knowledge that's never happened before, except for cause. The circumstances under which all of these grants were terminated has nothing to do with the way these agencies were doing the work under our grant contract--there's no allegations that we failed to perform, no violation of any grant terms. Every organization received the same (notice), verbatim--the only thing that was different was the name of the organization and address."
The suit, filed by the Fair Housing Alliance, challenges what it described as the "sudden and unlawful termination" of more than $30 million in congressionally authorized funding to fair housing groups nationwide "to fight discrimination and enforce fair housing laws throughout the country."
Lewis said the grant provided LASCO with essential funding to investigate complaints, represent clients, conduct testing to identify discriminatory practices and educate communities about their rights under the Fair Housing Act.
"It leaves us in a difficult position, in terms of how we plan and how we handle cases that are currently open," she said. "We'll continue to serve the clients we already have but we're not sure how it will impact our future fair housing work. If the termination is permanent, we will definitely have to cut back on the number of housing discrimination cases we handle."
Lewis said normal landlord-tenant work, like housing conditions, have other funding sources and aren't impacted.
"The only thing that would be impacted is investigations of housing discrimination," she said, pointing out that since the program was started in 2020, they'd investigated 100 cases in the Steubenville office.
"That's not a small number of cases," she said, adding that over the course of a year LASCO typically investigates about 300 complaints, of which about half are deemed meritorious.
"We have no idea how we were picked," she said, adding not every FHI program was on the list. "That's part of the confusion and part of the reason for the lawsuit ... it's almost as if they picked names out of a hat and if you were unlucky, your name was one of them."
She said if there's no enforcement mechanism, "then laws don't get enforced."
"It also affects (fair housing) education. Our first line of attack is always to educate landlords who maybe own one or two properties or inherited a home and decided to use it as a rental. They may not know the ins and outs of housing laws and it's in our interest to educate them so we never have to file a complaint."
Lewis also pointed out about 65 percent of their complaints are filed by individuals with disabilities, "so the bulk of what we're doing is helping seniors get access to access housing units, or helping folks with mental issues who need help negotiating because they maybe had a violation or (are a victim of domestic violence threatened with eviction because of the violence.)"
"These are your neighbors, everyday people in your community who need a little support to maintain stable housing," she said