City Limits Weekly: Today’s Legal Services Attorneys are Multi-Forum Advocates

City Limits Weekly interviews Raun Rasmussen, Chief of Litigation and Advocacy at Legal Services NYC and primary author of our new report, New Yorkers in Crisis.

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing
recently about New York reverting to 1970’s-level problems. You were a
Brooklyn housing lawyer for 18 years. How does today compare to when
you started out?

I think things are worse now. There are far
fewer affordable housing units. Vacancy decontrol was a disaster for
our clients, as is the refusal of landlords to take Section 8. The
expiration of Mitchell-Lama over the past 10 years has reduced
subsidized units. Combine that with static incomes and welfare budgets
not going up since 1990.

The advocacy community has responded to all this. We pushed for the Jiggetts
legislation, for one. We are in a long, constant fight to make progress
on behalf of low-income people. I’ve learned how tenacious and creative
the advocacy community in New York is—that was one of the great
benefits of writing this report.

Read the rest of the interview at City Limits Weekly's website. 

Click Here to download New Yorkers in Crisis (2.36 MB)

Click Here to download the Executive Summary (77.89 KB)