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Indiana Legal Services announced Wednesday that it has received $5 million in new grants to fund its work.
The Indiana Criminal Justice Institute is providing the bulk of that money — $3.1 million — to fund legal services over two years for victims of crime through five separate programs.
Those programs are the Immigrants’ and Language Rights Project, Legal Assistance for Victimized Adults, LGBTQ+ Project, Workers Rights and Protection Project and Domestic Violence Victims Advocacy Project.
The Indiana Supreme Court Office of Court Services is providing a $381,000 grant to fund legal representation of individuals in recovery from substance use disorder in the Lafayette and Fort Wayne areas for a four-year period.
This project will allow legal services staff to connect with recovery programs, including problem-solving courts such as drug courts, that will refer individuals who encounter civil legal problems that interfere with their recovery.
Examples of these problems are eviction, domestic violence, expungement of a criminal conviction, or difficulty obtaining a driver’s license.
Another $150,000 is coming from the Veterans Administration to help prevent homelessness among veterans. These funds will support work by legal services’ Military Assistance Project to represent veterans in eviction cases over the 14 months. The Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs has pitched in $45,000 to help with similar issues.
National Legal Aid and Defender Association has granted ILS up to $138,000 over three years to represent consumers on issues of telephone privacy and other consumer problems. These funds are part of a distribution from Krakauer v. Dish Network, LLC, 925 F.3d 643 (4th Cir. 2019).
The Marion County Commission on Children and Youth granted ILS approximately $20,000 to support aspects of our “Lawyer in the School” program, in which an attorney conducts special outreach events in Indianapolis public schools to address the legal needs of low-income families.
The Indianapolis Bar Foundation has granted ILS $35,000 to support work on “tangled title” cases in Central Indiana.
These situations arise when the title owner of a family home dies without making provision for ownership of the home upon death. Family members may continue to occupy the home, paying taxes and mortgage, but because there is no living title holder many problems can ensue.
This grant will allow legal services to increase its skill level in these cases and mount a public information campaign to educate homeowners about ways to avoid this problem when they die.
“These grants show that many different funders believe in ILS’s mission and want to see our work continue and expand,” Indiana Legal Servcies Executive Director Jon Laramore said in a press release. “The special funding we received during COVID allowed us to expand our services, and with that funding no longer available these new grants let us continue our mission.”
ILS previously received a $7.5 million sustainability grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. in June and a $475,000 from the Indiana Bar Foundation.
The Lilly Endowment Inc. grant helps ILS create a perpetual endowment and fund projects to improve its operations, IT infrastructure and fundraising capacity.
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