HOMELESS ADVOCACY PROJECT

In the fall of 1990, a group of concerned members of the Philadelphia Bar Association and the homeless services community created HAP to address the unmet legal needs of the City’s homeless population. This group was led by the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Problems of the Homeless Committee, Community Legal Services (CLS), and homeless advocates, including Sister Mary Scullion of Project HOME.

HAP was founded in the belief that people experiencing homelessness have unique and complex legal problems that often are not adequately addressed by traditional providers of legal services to indigent and low-income individuals. Individuals experiencing homelessness lead transient, unstable lives, and are often debilitated by mental illness, substance abuse, and inadequate education. They frequently lack an understanding of their legal rights and the ability to make effective use of the network of advocacy and service organizations that are available to assist them. Living in crisis, often without income or resources, persons experiencing homelessness are less likely, and less able, than other indigent clients to make use of Center City-based legal services programs.

To ensure that people experiencing homelessness people had access to legal services, HAP’s founders created an organization which delivers legal services directly to individuals and families experiencing homelessness in the places where they live and eat. Since its inception, HAP has conducted legal clinics in shelters and soup kitchens throughout Philadelphia. By recruiting and training volunteer attorneys, legal assistants, and law students to staff these clinics, HAP is able to provide free legal counseling and representation to a population not adequately served by other legal services programs. HAP is the only legal services organization in Philadelphia that conducts such direct outreach to the homeless population.

HAP collaborates with shelter providers, homeless advocates, community service providers, and the legal community to provide homeless clients with legal representation and to connect them with other social services. HAP currently holds legal clinics at homeless shelters, transitional housing sites, and soup kitchens throughout Philadelphia. Since HAP’s first legal clinic in December 1990, HAP’s 350 volunteers have helped more than 57,000 people experiencing homelessness. To date, HAP’s volunteers have provided more than $94 million worth of free legal services to clients experiencing homelessness.