City Bar Testifies in Support of Robust Civil Legal Services Funding

SUMMARY

At the 2025 Civil Legal Services Hearing, the City Bar urged continued and increased funding for civil legal aid, emphasizing its critical role in ensuring access to justice for New Yorkers facing poverty, housing instability, and other life-impacting legal issues. The testimony highlighted the growing need for legal services, especially among youth, seniors, and immigrant communities, and underscored the economic and social benefits of investing in civil legal aid. The City Bar also called for stronger support for New York City’s Right to Counsel law, better implementation of protections for heirs of property owners, and recognition of civil legal services as essential to upholding the rule of law.

REPORT

WRITTEN TESTIMONY SUBMITTED FOR THE CHIEF JUDGE’S 2025 CIVIL LEGAL SERVICES HEARING

New York City Bar Association 

September 18, 2025
Court of Appeals
Albany, N.Y.

The New York City Bar Association (“City Bar”) appreciates the opportunity to submit testimony for this year’s Civil Legal Services hearing and thanks Chief Judge Wilson, Chief Administrative Judge Zayas, the Presiding Justices, and all our court leaders for steadfastly supporting civil legal aid for New Yorkers in need. Our testimony will be in three related parts: first, an urgent plea to continue supporting the most robust allocations possible for civil legal services funding, especially to ensure that all New Yorkers have the ability to contribute to our State’s and Nation’s socioeconomic vitality and diversity; second, a discussion of why access to justice efforts must continue prioritizing access to safe and affordable housing; and third, a reminder that the civil legal services ecosystem has a unique role to play in supporting the rule of law.

I. THE MOST ROBUST CIVIL LEGAL SERVICES FUNDING ALLOCATIONS POSSIBLE REMAIN ESSENTIAL TO ENSURE ALL NEW YORKERS HAVE THE ABILITY TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR STATE’S AND NATION’S SOCIOECONOMIC VITALITY AND DIVERSITY

A. Civil Legal Aid Remains Critical, and the Need for It Is Increasing

The City Bar is grateful for recent steps by New York State to expand Judiciary Civil Legal Services funding and knows firsthand how important it is that civil legal services programs continue receiving the most robust and flexible funding streams possible. Many City Bar committees work on substantive areas of law impacting New York’s poorest and otherwise most vulnerable residents; the City Bar’s policy arm advocates for law reform to increase access to justice; and the dozens of full-time professionals who power the work of the City Bar’s civil legal services affiliate, the City Bar Justice Center, leverage the pro bono time and talent of the private bar to provide free, high quality civil legal services that last year benefited over 27,000 New Yorkers who desperately needed but could not afford counsel to address civil legal problems.

Collectively, these City Bar constituencies’ daily work and experiences confirm, first, that funding for civil legal services must remain robust, flexible, and indeed should be increased even further. These funding streams translate into an individual or family moving from a homeless shelter to their own home, or avoiding eviction or foreclosure to stay in their home; accessing public benefits, medical care, or other vital life essentials; or starting a new life away from the threat of persecution. To cite some specific examples of the difference that having a lawyer makes: representation significantly boosts the chances of securing legal immigration status[1]; implementing right to counsel in housing court (addressed at greater length in Part II of this testimony) has been shown to reduce evictions by 30%[2] and to help up to 84% of represented tenants remain in their homes[3]; and a 2023 report found that Unified Court System funding for representation in both housing and foreclosure-related matters saw a 55% increase in persons benefited by such legal services in just one year.[4] The City Bar Justice Center also knows from client testimonials and a recently launched Client Impact Assessment Initiative that having a civil legal services lawyer can make all the difference. More than three-quarters of clients personally spoken to in connection with the initiative confirmed that free legal assistance benefited them, with individual responses sharing that the services made tangible differences for them not only with respect to their legal problems, but also emotionally, financially, and socially by, for example, providing clarity around complex legal problems, and securing digestible resources and actionable solutions that they otherwise might not have accessed.

At the same time, the need for civil legal services is increasing as New York moves further from pandemic aid programs that lifted many of our neediest neighbors. Studies by the Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”) and, especially and more locally, by the Poverty Tracker Research Group at Columbia University and Robin Hood highlight persistent and even growing forms of poverty and disadvantage that far too many of our neighbors endure, particularly coming out of the pandemic. Both studies also not only highlight the consequences of economic insecurity on access to justice, but also make clear that these problems disproportionately impact communities of color.[5]

• LSC’s April 2022 Justice Gap Report, the fourth in a series and the first since the pandemic, found that an estimated 15% of U.S. households were below 125% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) in 2022.[6] For perspective, 125% of the Federal Poverty Level in 2025 for the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia is $19,562.50 for a single person, $26,437.50 for a two-person household, or $33,312 for a three-person household.[7] These figures understate the level of poverty for New Yorkers given New York’s high cost of living. LSC’s 2022 Justice Gap Report highlights the fact that 74% of individuals below 125% FPL experienced at least one civil legal issue in the prior year; 39% experienced more than five such issues; and the most common problems reported were those that go to the heart of personal well-being and economic security: consumer issues (50%), health-related problems (39%), housing instability (33%), and custody disputes (26%).[8] That is concerning in its own right, and what the Permanent Commission focuses on – the “Justice Gap” – means that those great many individuals at 125% or below the FPL did not receive assistance for 92% of substantially impactful legal problems, compared to 86% of those between 125% and 400% of the FPL and 78% of those at 400% or above the FPL.^[9] And in what should be of concern to all invested in access to justice, LSC’s 2022 findings represented an increase in the justice gap compared with LSC’s 2017 report, which had found that 71% of low-income households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the previous year, and 86% of low-income Americans’ civil legal problems were insufficiently assisted.^[10]
• Statistics from the Columbia Robin Hood Poverty Tracker Report document these issues closer to home, finding that poverty rates in New York City in 2023, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available, were almost double the national average for adults (24% vs. 13%), as well as for children (26% vs. 14%). The report highlights that government policy during the pandemic had helped stabilize poverty relative to prior years, but that with the phase-out of these programs, poverty has spiked to its highest level in recent years.[11] The Poverty Tracker Report also found that poverty is unequally distributed across demographic groups. Latino New Yorker poverty rates were more than twice that of white New Yorkers (28% vs. 13%); poverty rates among Asian and Black New Yorkers were also higher (at 26% and 24%, respectively, vs. 13% for white New Yorkers); across metrics, women experienced higher rates of disadvantage than men; and New Yorkers born outside the U.S. experienced higher poverty and hardship rates than U.S.-born New Yorkers.^[12] Moreover, making clear the relevance of the Poverty Tracker findings to the justice gap, 26% of adults and 30% of children faced material hardship related to areas that closely intertwine with legal issues affecting the essentials of life, including housing, medical assistance, general finances, and food access.[13]

Much of this data is similar to what the City Bar Justice Center sees, with the top six legal areas most frequently addressed in its most recently completed reporting year being housing and family issues (at roughly 24% and 21%, respectively, of all matters the Justice Center handled), followed by consumer and employment issues (at roughly 18% and 5%, respectively), and then income maintenance and immigration (each at nearly 5%).[14] The City Bar Justice Center’s services data also highlight the growing need for legal services. Assisting over 27,000 New Yorkers in need in the past year, the City Bar Justice Center closed 2% more cases than the prior year, saw 8% more use of its online resources and information.[15] Meanwhile, despite increased staffing and increases in staff efficiency, data for the City Bar Justice Center’s free civil legal hotline (the “Hotline”), which is in many ways the gateway to the Justice Center’s dozen access to justice projects, showed that in recent months its staff did not have the time or resources to reach 8 out of 10 Hotline callers – a concerning but consistent trend that is about 33% higher than historical rates. And that is despite the fact that Hotline staffing as well as staff efficiency have gone up, and the Justice Center has expanded platforms the public can use to secure legal information and advice. Quite simply, existing resources do not meet the existing need for civil legal services.

B. Need Is Particularly Acute for the Most Vulnerable Age Groups – Youth and Seniors

Both data and news-grabbing headlines also make clear the need for access to justice support particularly for our most vulnerable communities – children and youth, seniors, and immigrant New Yorkers.

As detailed above, poverty rates among children in New York City are nearly double the national average (26% vs. 14%). This represents a steep increase since the pandemic, when it had dropped to about 15%, and is in line with the prior year’s figures, which represented the Columbia Robin Hood Poverty Tracker’s highest observed annual poverty rate for children in New York City since 2015.[16] The City Bar Justice Center’s own data is consistent with this trend; services benefiting households with children and youth under the age of 25 have increased over 20% since the pandemic, and current services data also exceeds the measurement from 2019, the last year prior to the pandemic.

At the other end of life’s spectrum, there is continued need for legal services for the growing senior population, which is experiencing increased poverty. The senior population just in New York City (individuals aged 65+) increased by about 500,000 between 2000 to 2023, growing to 1.43 million – a 53% increase in about two decades.[17] Unfortunately, poverty rates among NYC seniors also have increased, hitting 26% based on a three-year average of 2019, 2022, and 2023 data.[18] Meanwhile, the Legal Services Corporation’s Justice Gap Report has documented that over 70% of low-income senior households had at least one legal problem in the past year, and over 91% of that cohort received insufficient or no legal help for these problems, with the greatest numbers reporting legal problems associated with consumer issues (43% reported having such issues), health care issues (37%), and income maintenance issues (29%). Other significant issues facing seniors included housing, kinship care, public benefits, elder abuse, and consumer scams – also topics that civil legal aid programs squarely address.[19] The City Bar sees these issues firsthand as well. City Bar Justice Center services assisting those aged 60 and over not only also have increased each year since 2020, but also have increased as a percentage of total services in each of those years, and exceed pre-pandemic percentages for that cohort.

C. Robust Civil Legal Aid Funding Helps Ensure All New Yorkers Have the Ability to Contribute to Our State’s and Nation’s Socioeconomic Vitality and Diversity

Increased civil legal services funding not only helps those in need but also helps our economy, and we offer some observations about why sustained if not increased funding is critically important, and what it concretely does.

First, civil legal services funding is a sound investment. In its most recent fiscal year, City Bar Justice Center services realized nearly $16 million in measurable direct financial benefits for clients, representing more than a 250% return on investment relative to program budget – yet those benefits stemmed from roughly 3% of total matters handled. Numerous successful matters – e.g., resolving a housing or family law dispute, or securing asylum – may lack a cognizable financial value, but have tremendous human value in freedom secured, rights vindicated, and stresses alleviated.[20] In short, civil legal services funding both “does good,” and is a good investment.

Second, extending from the point above, civil legal services funding brings great value to New York’s – and our nation’s – economy.  As the direct audience of this testimony knows well, a 2019 report of the Permanent Commission on Access to Justice detailed Mr. Neil Steinkamp’s finding that Judiciary Civil Legal Services funding generated $10 for our state’s economy for every $1 of funding.[21] Given this data, and the goal of preserving economic competitiveness, further increasing each dollar of civil legal services funding addresses profound human need and empowers those who benefit from it to dynamically contribute to our state’s and nation’s socioeconomic vitality and diversity. That is especially true as safety net effects of pandemic assistance fade, the federal safety net faces deep cuts, and providers like the City Bar Justice Center and so many other providers see a rise in the demand for free civil legal assistance. To cite just one anecdote, the most recent legal clinic of the Justice Center’s Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project – just one late summer clinic, out of nearly three dozen such clinics each and every year – served clients creating or building businesses in the cleaning services, educational consulting, entertainment accessories, holistic mental health and wellness services, language instruction, marketing of original artistic paintings and drawings, wellness coaching, and women’s wear sectors – thus demonstrating the positive economic ripple effects and diverse economy-building that civil legal services funding helps make possible. All such facts and statistics underscore why requests for increased civil legal services funding are not requests for mere “charity,” but in fact keep New York, if not our nation, economically competitive and growth oriented.

Third, increased and sufficiently robust civil legal services funding provides critical support to the necessary human expertise and knowledge and technical infrastructure supporting dynamic programming like that mentioned above. The City Bar Justice Center belongs to the 46-member New York Legal Services Coalition (the “Coalition”) and is among legal services organizations benefiting from the recent inclusion of a cost-of-living (“COLA”) adjustment and across-the-board increases in Judiciary Civil Legal Services funding. That helps with some catch-up after years of rising need and escalating costs but minimal, if any, funding increases. But even these expansions of funding do not fully address the need. By virtue of its own experience working to support compensation structures necessary to recruit and retain the best possible talent to support civil legal services clients’ complex needs, the City Bar Justice Center shares the Coalition’s concerns regarding pay parity shared in the Coalition’s recent report on the subject, which observed that “[e]ntry level pay for attorneys in civil legal services is 30% to 45% lower than their government counterparts doing substantially similar work,” that such inequities “only grow” across the arc of civil legal services professionals’ careers, and that, “after ten years of civil legal services employment, the chasm between civil legal services attorneys and the attorneys in the Attorney General’s office can be as high as 75% in some parts of the state.”[22] In short, addressing pay parity is the first of many ways that increased civil legal services funding can address systemic vulnerabilities in the civil legal aid ecosystem – vulnerabilities that, at the end of the day, ultimately impact the most vulnerable whom this aid is intended to assist.

Fourth, threatened legal services and safety net funding cuts at the federal level, as well as proposed changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (“PSLF”) program, would devastate the capacity of New York civil legal aid providers to continue their good work, and are all the more reason for New York State to sustain if not increase funding. In just over six months’ time, a raft of deeply concerning federal threats have appeared on the horizon: (1) cuts to housing vouchers, Medicaid, and safety net programs will increase demand for legal aid as people struggle to keep benefits; (2) cuts to the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) would devastate LSC providers and force all other providers to absorb the overflow of unmet need; (3) H.R. 1 imposes new fees and hurdles on immigrants, limiting access to fair hearings; (3) PSLF is an essential tool for recruiting and retaining staff in the public sector, and the proposed amendment to PSLF contained in 34 CFR 685.219 will impose limitations on which employers will be able to benefit from PSLF and deter motivated people from nonprofit work affecting delivery of civil legal services – in addition to impacting public employees, such as those at OCA and other branches of New York State and local government, teachers, and other public servants.

Finally, spinning the immediately preceding point in the opposite direction, a few words about what additional concrete increases in funding might accomplish – and what, at minimum, must be maintained. We previously noted that despite staffing increases and increased staff efficiency, the City Bar Justice Center’s Legal Hotline often does not have the resources to connect with up to 80% of those seeking its assistance – what, in Hotline parlance, is called an “abandonment rate.” In years past, the Hotline’s abandonment rate was consistently one-third lower than where it stands today – quite simply, because need has increased. Using very rough estimates, just $175,000 in additional annualized funding could result in an additional 2,000 Hotline matters being addressed each year, which translates to an additional 4,050 low-income New Yorkers benefiting from free civil legal assistance[23] at a cost of just $87.50 per matter – or roughly one-third less than the cost of a single ticket for the cheapest seating areas for a New York Knicks game. Given that the City Bar Justice Center’s Legal Hotline closed over 11,000 matters in 2024 assisting nearly 23,000 New Yorkers in need, each $175,000 in additional funding could incrementally boost Hotline services by 10% or more. Put another way, an additional $500,000 in funding could support nearly 6,000 more case services and benefit nearly 12,000 more New Yorkers in need in just one year. And an additional $1 million could support over 11,000 more Legal Hotline cases benefiting nearly 25,000 more New Yorkers in need in one year – significantly exceeding the capacity of Madison Square Garden with individuals assisted via critical legal services at a time of need.[24] Greater investments may take time – but that is all the more reason, at minimum, to preserve recent commitments to increases. For that reason, the City Bar joins the New York Legal Services Coalition in respectfully recommending that the Permanent Commission (1) maintain the present $45.5 million JCLS investment with no reductions; (2) continue annual COLAs to stabilize staffing and address rising costs; (3) prioritize funding flexibility so providers can address pay parity, infrastructure, and anticipated federal cuts; and (4) recognize that restrictive funding undermines holistic services and prevents providers from meeting clients’ evolving needs.

II. ACCESS TO JUSTICE EFFORTS MUST CONTINUE TO PRIORITIZE LEGAL SUPPORT NECESSARY TO SAFE AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING ACCESS

Our testimony in prior years focused on safe and affordable housing access, and we reiterate how crucial such access is as an “essentials of life” component of access to justice. We believe it is worth emphasizing some key points with respect to how New York City’s Housing Court Right to Counsel Law (“RTC”) is working and should be further supported as well as how updates to New York’s 2019 Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act must continue to be properly applied to help preserve inter-generational wealth, especially among homeowners of color.

High quality legal representation of tenants in Housing Court is a powerful response to evictions, racial discrimination, and the challenges identified in Secretary Jeh Johnson’s October 2020 Equal Justice report.[25] It also provides for a fairer, more efficient and better understood judicial process that benefits court personnel and judges and strengthens the rule of law.

New York City’s RTC law was enacted in 2017 and has shown promising results, demonstrating that disturbing trends could be reversed.[26] Prior to passage of RTC, we saw the court and a high-stakes legal process being used to the consistent disadvantage of unrepresented litigants: that is, high numbers of eviction filings and unacceptably high numbers of default judgments against largely unrepresented litigants of color living in rent-regulated housing in NYC. Proceedings were conducted in quick order, or settlements were “negotiated” and produced in hallways between unrepresented tenants and landlord lawyers. We cannot go back to that system of injustice and, yet, legal services providers are reporting that we are at risk of doing just that if we do not effectively address the current situation in NYC Housing Court, where more and more tenants are being forced to appear pro se in proceedings in which the loss of their homes is a very real possibility.

Where other courts have continued virtual proceedings and taken measures learned from the pandemic to integrate technology and procedures to preserve the dignity and efficiency of the court process, the Housing Court has moved backward. Despite the existence of the biggest rent crisis ever experienced, housing court calendars are as long as they were pre-pandemic. Amidst a shortage of court personnel and clerical staff, the Housing Court is flooded with cases in an ad hoc fashion which creates chaos. The courtrooms and hallways are crowded with people, and tenants are increasingly being forced to proceed without counsel. Providers simply cannot keep up with the demand and are forced to refuse representation. Despite being the first municipality to enact a landmark and groundbreaking RTC law, and despite its early promise, we are now allowing outdated and dysfunctional processes to plunge blindly forward.

We must do better than to return to the “cattle call” culture of the past. We respectfully reiterate implementing the following recommendations in the short term: (1) court calendars should be temporarily modified by first scheduling cases that already have two attorneys; then, adjourned cases that now have two attorneys can be added back to the calendar[27]; (2) RTC attorneys should be given a sufficient amount of time to establish the attorney-client relationship and research and investigate complex cases; (3) requests for virtual proceedings to accommodate a disability should be routinely honored in accordance with the law; (4) the use of virtual appearances should be re-integrated into the system for administrative and non-hearing appearances; and (5) judges should offer RTC at every stage of the proceeding, not just at the initial appearance. In the long term, to assure that the number of attorneys meets the demand for representation, two key additional steps should be taken: the City should provide sufficient funding so that legal services providers can pay salaries and benefits to RTC attorneys that are comparable to salaries for prosecutors, corporation counsel and other government attorneys, which would greatly assist RTC providers in recruiting and retaining staff; and New York State should fund the development of law school clinics in the NYS law schools that can train and prepare students for the growing number of RTC jobs.

In sum, our leaders must do more to support New York City’s Housing Court Right to Counsel law and assure that all tenants who are entitled to counsel are able to obtain it. In these efforts, we must connect tenants with their lawyers as early in the eviction process as possible and supply legal services providers with sufficient resources and a pipeline of qualified attorneys to assure that all who are entitled are able to obtain representation. Moreover, tenants throughout New York State, not just tenants in New York City, should have a right to legal representation when they face eviction. The City Bar supports the passage of statewide RTC legislation, which has been pending before the state legislature for several years.

Second, our testimony in past years has detailed how both the City Bar and the City Bar Justice Center took leading roles in a law reform movement, culminating in New York’s passage in 2019 of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA),[28] which established significant state legal protections for heirship property owners. Armed with the tools of this reform, the Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project increasingly engages in direct representation, public education, and law reform work to advocate for individuals and families of limited economic means who possess heirship interests in intergenerationally-owned homes, often in areas of New York City with rapidly increasing home values.^[29] Updates to New York’s UPHPA made effective last summer provide additional protections for family members owning heirs property that is subject to partition, oftentimes following the purchase of fractional family member shares by outside investors, in a process that can dislodge New Yorkers from their longtime family homes and eviscerate home equity built up over generations.[30] It remains a concern, however, that many attorneys handling these cases on both sides have no idea about the existence of this now six-year-old law, nor the recent updates that further strengthen its homeowner protections. Moreover, courts’ handling of requirements under the law are at times uneven. We continue to engage in outreach and collaboration with elected officials, the courts, and community groups to increase awareness of the new law. We also provide programming and training at the City Bar and elsewhere for judges, law enforcement, and other key stakeholders in the UPHPA’s implementation, including topics surrounding deed theft and other equity-stripping schemes that often involve heirs property. This work is also important to advancing racial justice, as the vast majority of New Yorkers served by City Bar Justice Center Homeowner Stability Project advocacy belong to communities that have been historically denied equal access to homeownership benefits due to structural racism in housing and lending policies.

Related is the intersection of homeowner stability services and estate planning, a wide-ranging practice area that many legal services providers lack the capacity to address comprehensively, but which is crucial to the preservation of affordable homeownership and the accumulation and transfer of intergenerational family wealth. The need for effective legal advocacy in this multifaceted field – which comprises a part of the City Bar Justice Center’s civil legal aid practice – is reflected in the United States’ long history of property loss, especially in communities of color, as well as current events and trends such as the impact of COVID-19, a persistent racial wealth gap, and predatory schemes to strip ownership of family homes from their rightful owners. Estate planning is the act of memorializing decisions regarding the disposition and control of a person’s assets in the event of their death or incapacity. It is also referred to as “life planning” because it includes the memorialization of decisions with respect to health care, property, and financial matters via legal documentation that is effective during one’s lifetime. Estate planning is crucial for homeowners because one’s home is often their most significant asset. Proper estate planning for homeowners ensures the preservation of intergenerational wealth by avoiding tangled title, ensuring that the disposition of property is handled according to a homeowner’s wishes, and making certain that loved ones are protected and empowered in the event of the homeowner’s illness, death, or other unforeseen circumstances. Without services like those provided by legal aid providers like the Justice Center’s Homeowner Stability Project and similar providers, many members of our community, especially in communities of color, face the loss of longtime family homes (and often substantial home equity) following mortgage and tax lien foreclosure – or, especially, predatory partition actions brought by third-party investors who purchase heirs’ often quite minimal partial interests in intergenerationally occupied homes and then sue to force a sale, displacing the heir occupants. As the civil legal services community continues to focus on access to safe and affordable housing as an essential component of closing the justice gap, we urge that this attention also consider the related issue of preserving socioeconomic diversity in homeownership in New York.

III. THE CIVIL LEGAL SERVICES ECOSYSTEM HAS A UNIQUE, CONTINUING ROLE TO PLAY IN SUPPORTING THE RULE OF LAW

The City Bar believes that the civil legal services ecosystem has a unique and continuing role to play in supporting the rule of law and access to justice for New Yorkers of limited means or who experience other vulnerabilities. In recent months, federal officials have taken actions that threaten the foundational principles of our democracy. Judicial independence is under attack,[31] undermining the effective operation and independent administration of justice by the judicial branch. Simultaneously, efforts to punish private law firms,[32] attorneys, and legal clinics,[33] for defending constitutional rights continue to escalate. These efforts will undoubtedly jeopardize these professionals’ ability to provide pro bono legal assistance in areas disfavored by the present federal executive administration. With an increasing demand for civil legal assistance for New Yorkers – particularly in areas such as immigration, housing, and social services – the political and financial pressures placed on legal services organizations are pushing the civil legal services ecosystem to a breaking point.[34] In this climate, access to justice for marginalized New Yorkers is at greater risk than ever. We therefore urge state leaders, lawmakers, and the courts to take all necessary steps to ensure that New Yorkers in need of civil legal assistance are able to get the help they need to access and maintain the essentials of life for themselves and their families.

***

The City Bar very much appreciates your consideration of these important issues and would be happy to assist in any way we can to support the work of the Commission and expand access to justice for New Yorkers in need.

The City Bar thanks the following individuals from the City Bar Justice Center for their significant contributions to this testimony:  Kurt M. Denk, Executive Director; Libby Vazquez, Director of Legal Services and Director, Legal Hotline and Planning & Estates Law Project; Cheryl Lopez, Director of Operations; Akira Arroyo, Director, Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project; Edward Mostoller, Director, Homeowner Stability Project; Angie Chirino, Operations and Program Coordinator; and Project Coordinators Catherine Mykolajtchuk, Edmund Denfeld, and Grace Boehm.  Likewise, the City Bar thanks Alison King, Andrew Scherer and Sara Wagner, co-chairs of the City Bar’s Task Force on the Civil Right to Counsel.