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Vermont Legal Aid
We bring justice home.
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Remembering Guen |
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This issue of Justice Quarterly is dedicated to Guen Gifford who died in a paragliding accident November 1. Guen was a housing advocate at Chittenden Community Action from 1994-96, when she began working at Legal Services Law Line as a paralegal focusing on public benefits. She began reading for the law and became an attorney in 2002. She was a staff attorney at Law Line, working in consumer law, when she died.
Guen was a tireless advocate for the forgotten and ignored. She hated complacency and condescension and loved surprise, spontaneity and joy. We know that she will not be back and that we will not see her like again. We hope her memory will help us to challenge our own assumptions about people and to live our lives with the fearlessness we saw in her. |
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Fair Housing in Vermont |
It's brown twig season. The leaves have fallen, the first snows have come, the tourists have left, and it's that time of year when most of us are busily preparing feasts and celebrations with our families and friends. Time for hearth and home. Some of us rent our homes, and some of us own them. Either way, we are cleaning and sprucing up, cooking, and perhaps baking and decorating too. What traditional family Thanksgiving dishes will you just have to take a bite of even if you feel like you'll split if you do? What celebrations are you planning? Or will the ceaseless Christmas music make you feel isolated in your own community? Maybe you plan to host a Chanukah latke party or introduce your friends to Kwanzaa, or go Christmas caroling with your neighbors. Or maybe you're just looking forward to a day or two off at the end of the year while the rest of the world races around exhausting themselves. Whatever you do, it's a good time of year: the serious cold isn't here yet, snow is still exciting and fun, and all around, it's a happy season.
"Uhh-" you interrupt this Norman Rockwell moment to query, "that's . . . nice, but what the heck does it have to do with fair housing?" Fair housing (through anti-discrimination laws, regulations, and enforcement) protects legal rights and ensures that every person has the same chance to use and enjoy a home as every other person. But fair housing isn't just about protected classes and rights. At its heart, if you will, fair housing is the promise of hearth, home, and community for every person, and vibrant, diverse communities for everyone to live, learn, grow, and work in.
Sure, we could tell you that since this past January we have given legal advice to over 100 fair housing complainants and represented 50 victims of discrimination or that we have carried out 65 paired tests or litigated cases for people in every protected class in Federal and State courts as well as at the Human Rights Commission. But that's not really what we remember. What we remember is the people we got to know whose dignity was restored, who kept or got a home, whose landlord finally understood that we, all of us, sometimes need a little flexibility. Each of those people we got to know is, right now, just like everyone else, looking forward to the closing of this year having seen that they, too, have a right to home, hearth, friends, and community.
Fair housing serves us all by making our communities stronger and better by integrating them and bringing to them diversity of experience, knowledge, traditions, culinary delights, and viewpoints. We are all better people, and our communities and society are better, for knowing people who are members of various groups different from our own. Housing integration improves our quality and experience of life and opens our communities up to new ideas and new opportunities. This holiday season, as you enjoy the warmth, happiness, and, let's face it, challenges of the holiday season, imagine that Norman Rockwell painting of Vermont, with our beautiful, small cities, towns, villages, gores, and farms, and imagine that in those houses, on those sliding hills, and at that holiday fair or fire department fundraiser, are widely diverse people: different, similar, and the same, depending on what pair of lenses you are using. That is fair housing.
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Scammers Target Taxpayers: Beware of e-mails from the IRS |
The IRS is seeing an increase in "phishing" scams aimed at taxpayers. Individuals and businesses are both being targeted. Recently, even nonprofit organizations have received scam e-mails. These phishing scams take the form of an e-mail that appears to come from the IRS.
Emails often contain enticements for the recipient such as additional money back on their previous year's tax return. Regardless of how official this e-mail may look and sound, the IRS never initiates unsolicited e-mail contact with taxpayers about their tax issues. The Internet-based scam artists use the personal information obtained through these e-mails and Web sites to steal the victim's identity, access bank accounts, run up credit card charges or apply for loans in the victim's name. Some emails also contain attachments that will infect your computer.
If you receive an e-mail that you suspect is a phishing attempt or directs you to an imitation IRS Web site, please report it to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov. You can also visit the IRS Web site at IRS.gov and enter the keyword phishing for additional information.
Help for Tax Problems is Available
The Vermont Legal Aid Low-Income Taxpayer Project is here to help your clients with their IRS problems! We can help with collection issues (e.g. garnishments), audits, un-reported income, and innocent spouse claims, to name a few.
Clients in Washington, Orange, and Lamoille counties should call the Central Vermont Low Income Taxpayer Clinic at 802-479-1053, or 1-800-639-1053.
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Unemployment Insurance
Trust Fund at Risk |
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Unemployment benefits are one of the great economic stabilizers that help economies rebound from difficult economic times. They are an immediate and potent form of economic "stimulus" that helps to offset the impact of joblessness when families need it most. The money paid out to unemployed Vermonters and their families ensures the next mortgage, rent, or car payment gets made and that basic necessities are met and bills paid. The recession is taking its toll on Vermont's unemployment fund, however, and worker benefits are at risk.
Currently, Vermont has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country at about 6.7%. However, just because Vermonters are doing everything they can to remain employed and weather the recession doesn't mean that Vermont isn't feeling the effects of extended high rates of unemployment. One of the results of the recession is a general increase in the number of unemployment claims, and an increase in the length of time workers are drawing unemployment benefits. The result is a rapid depletion of the unemployment insurance trust fund. This is the fund employers pay into to help stabilize the workforce when layoffs occur, and from which benefits are paid. Most experts agree the fund is set to be fully depleted by January of 2010.
As a result, both the legislature and the Douglas Administration are considering options to resolve the trust fund crisis. The legislature assembled an unemployment insurance trust fund task force to review all possible options including interest-free borrowing from the federal government, raising new revenue from employers, and possibly making some benefit cuts. The Administration has argued for an increase in contributions from employers and significant cuts to benefits for Vermont workers. Legal Aid has vigorously opposed any cuts to workers and their families who benefit from unemployment compensation arguing that laid-off workers who have suffered the loss of a job can ill-afford any further economic losses.
Among the most problematic of the Administration's proposals are:
A further reduction in the maximum benefit (originally the Administration proposed a cut to $409, now they want to cut further to $400) - that's an extra $36 bucks per month; and
A mandatory 1-week waiting period for all claimants; and
Basing the weekly benefit amount on the last 4 quarters worked as opposed to the last two quarters as is currently the case.
This would really affect seasonal employees who cannot find reliable employment year-round; and
Making it harder for part-time workers to work and get partial unemployment; and
Creating an earnings requirement for anyone discharged for "misconduct" - this would effectively cut a large number of people off from receiving any benefit at all regardless of how serious the alleged misconduct was.
Restoring the unemployment insurance trust fund is essential. We need a balanced approach to solve the problem. A mix of short-term borrowing and longer-term phased in adjustments to contributions from employers is the best way to stabilize the workforce and give employers an opportunity to emerge from the recession intact. Contributions have not been adjusted for a quarter century, and we should be doing everything we can to stabilize the workforce. Reducing or eliminating help for laid off Vermont workers will only prolong the recession and impede the ability of Vermonters to get back to work.
It remains to be seen what recommendations the legislature will make and how that will compare to what the Administration has proposed. Legal Aid will continue to monitor any proposed changes to the unemployment fund on behalf of Vermont workers who will be affected by the outcome.
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Vermont Legal Aid Launches New
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Vermont Legal Aid unveiled its new and improved web site in September. The site provides individual pages for each of our six law projects. The project pages offer information on eligibility and services and include links to additional related sites. It is now possible for clients to contact VLA through the web site, and for potential employees to learn about job opportunities and apply on-line. To visit the new site go to www.vtlegalaid.org. | |
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Thanks for reading Justice Quarterly and please forward it to others that may be interested in the work of Vermont Legal Aid.
Sincerely,
Dee Carlin
VLA |
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