Legal Aid Justice Center
Founded in 1967, the Legal Aid Justice Center provides civil legal assistance to low-income families and individuals in Virginia with a special focus on vulnerable populations, including children, immigrants, the elderly, and the institutionalized. Our mission is to seek equal justice for all by solving clients’ legal problems, strengthening the voices of low-income communities, and rooting out the inequities that keep people in poverty. Our Virginia Institutionalized Persons (VIP) Project aims to improve conditions and protect the basic human rights of everyone living in the commonwealth’s institutional facilities, including prisons, jails and mental health hospitals.
THE CASE
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Every day the 1,200 women prisoners at Virginia’s largest and most secure women’s prison receive no health care for serious conditions or receive abysmally sub-standard care. On July 24, 2012, we, along with Wiley Rein LLP of Washington, D.C. and the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of five women prisoners incarcerated in the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.
The lawsuit, titled Scott v. Clarke, and filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, challenges the Virginia Department of Corrections, and the company they contract with to provide health services, for failing to provide constitutionally adequate medical care. Our complaint demonstrates that the medical care provided is so deficient that it violates the Eighth Amendment.
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To keep public housing affordable for lower-income households, the United States Housing Act directs that the resident’s share of rent in most federally assisted housing programs be limited to no more than 30% of the household’s adjusted monthly income. This tenant housing payment includes both rent and the additional costs for reasonable amounts of utilities that are not included in the rent. In an effort to ensure that residents’ basic housing costs are appropriately limited, federal guidelines require local housing authorities to justify, document and update the schedule of utility allowances for their residential units. Tenants’ usage is metered and they are billed for amounts over the allowance. It is generally expected that only a small minority of tenants will receive excess charges on a monthly basis. On behalf of a group of affected tenants, we are investigating noncompliance with these requirements by a local housing authority. We have not yet filed suit.
CASE UPDATES SINCE GRANT YEAR
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Lewis et. al. v. Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority et. al.
Reports on the results of the class suit they filed on behalf of public housing residents contending that the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority systematically overcharged residents for their utilities. Settlement of the case included direct payments to tenants and led to similar cases in two other Virginia cities.
GRANT AMOUNT
$10,000 (2014)
$10,000 (2012)