Senator Osten, Rep. Walker, Senator Somers, and Rep. Nuccio, and members of the appropriations committee. My name is Alison Weir, and I am the executive director of Connecticut Veteran Legal Center. I am writing to ask that the committee add funding to the proposed budget for the Judicial Department to continue the Right to Counsel Program which pays for attorneys to represent tenants facing eviction in housing court. The program, which has been operating for 3 years, was funded by ARPA funding, which is expiring. In order to continue, we will need state funds to continue the work. CVLC participates in the program which is administered by the Connecticut Bar Foundation, as one of five service providers.

Connecticut Veterans Legal Center provides free civil legal services for low-income veterans throughout Connecticut. Although we have handled housing matters since our founding in 2009, as a small agency, our bandwidth for the work was limited. The Right to Counsel program enabled us to greatly expand our staff handling housing, more than doubling our civil legal unit as we added 2.5 equivalent full-time positions. It has also allowed us to expand our reach. Until we increased our staff with Right to Counsel, the “Connecticut” part of our name was aspirational—we primarily served veterans located close to the VA centers in West Haven and Newington. Under the Right to Counsel program, we have represented veterans in every county in the state. We are the only program that has never been limited by zip code, and it has allowed us to assist veterans in small towns, such as Hebron, as well as the big cities of Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford. We have also expanded our services to better serve the eastern part of the state, particularly the communities around New London and Groton that are home to so many veterans.

The program has had a synergistic effect with our primary model of providing legal services as part of a medical-legal partnership with VA Healthcare-Connecticut. Although we still serve clients referred to us by VA clinicians, we now receive calls from veterans not currently associated with the VA. We are often able to connect them to services the VA provides that they had not been receiving before. For the last several years, the VA has been laser-focused on addressing veteran homelessness and has created a number of services to address and prevent homelessness: the supportive services for Veteran Families (SSVF), VA supportive housing vouchers in partnership with HUD; case management teams for veterans in recovery from addiction or mental health. With our Right to Counsel work, we are able to connect our clients to these programs to prevent future evictions once we settle the initial eviction case. Additionally, we are able to connect some RTC clients to VA disability benefits, providing them a steady source of funding that can reduce their risk of homelessness.

The work we do is lifesaving and critical for our clients, who often do not have the training nor the bandwidth to argue on their own behalf in court. Forty-one percent of our clients are disabled, including 20% with Alzheimer’s or other cognitive disorders. Some of our clients are in the midst of health crises. For instance, we were able to keep a veteran who was undergoing cancer treatment and up-to-date on his rent payments in his home by pointing the landlord’s attorney to state statute CGS Sec. 47a-23c, which prohibits landlords owning building of five or more units from evicting the disabled and elderly absent good cause. The case was withdrawn and the veteran was able to stay in his home.

In another case, a veteran who was not connected to the VA and had moving in and out of homelessness, came to us through RTC when he received a notice to quit his rooming house. We were able to connect him to VA services including Supportive Services for Veteran Families as well as the case management and training services offered through Homes for the Brave to provide access to benefits and a more stable footing for recovery.

Right to Counsel did not change the type of work we do, but it did change our ability to do more of it and serve more veterans. Without this program, we would be severely constrained in our ability to reach across the state. The RTC program has not only allowed us to assist 319 veterans in 349 cases, preserving their housing or avoiding eviction, it has allowed us to better fulfill our overall mission of assisting Connecticut’s low-income veterans regardless of where they live in the state.