{"id":31424,"date":"2021-02-05T13:43:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T21:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=31424"},"modified":"2021-02-05T13:43:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T21:43:36","slug":"korean-chinese-vietnamese-and-thai-offered-free-legal-help-on-housing-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=31424","title":{"rendered":"KOREAN, CHINESE, VIETNAMESE AND THAI OFFERED FREE LEGAL HELP ON HOUSING PROBLEMS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by\u00a0Mark Hedin<\/a><\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Feb 4, 2021<\/span>\u00a0|\u00a0Immigrant Rights<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Also available in\u00a0Chinese<\/a>,\u00a0Korean<\/a>, and\u00a0Thai<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By Mark Hedin, Ethnic Media Services<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the whole world struggles against the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice is offering free, in-language legal help for Koreans, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese in LA County trying to find or keep safe housing.<\/p>\n

The program, the Housing Rights Legal Help Clinic, will provide free, personal legal help with housing and discrimination issues, either online or over the phone, with attorneys fluent in Thai, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese, as well as English \u2013 vetted by Advancing Justice-LA and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll provide confidential help for low-income or limited-English proficient AANHPI community members dealing with landlord harassment, eviction, lease disputes or other issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that limited-English proficient individuals are too often underserved, so we are here to keep them housed and protected during this tumultuous time,\u201d Connie Chung Joe, the organization\u2019s CEO, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to screen out racially discriminatory practices,\u201d Supervising Attorney Charles Evans said.<\/p>\n

After an initial phone interview to establish people\u2019s language requirements and financial eligibility (based on federal standards for measuring poverty), callers will be given a clinic appointment. These are scheduled for the second Tuesday of every month \u2013 from 6 to 8 p.m. Depending on their needs, callers might also be referred to more appropriate help in-house or with a partner organization, Evans said.<\/p>\n

For Chinese language help, call (800) 520-2356; for Korean: (800) 867-3640; for Tagalog: (855) 300-2552; for Thai: (800) 914-9583; for English or other languages: (888) 349-9695.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of our community are working hard to keep and obtain essential safe housing,\u201d Joe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time (Donald Trump) referred to \u2018the Wuhan virus,\u2019 the \u2018Chinese virus\u2019 or the \u2018Kung Flu,\u2019\u201d she said, \u201cthere would be a spike in reports of hate crimes.\u201d But \u201ceven without that president, we\u2019ve seen an underlying racist sentiment in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although thousands of hate crimes against AANHPI community members have already been reported nationwide, she said, with a concentration of those in Southern California, when newer statistics come in, she said, \u201cWe expect a significant uptick.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the time being, an array of federal, state and local eviction moratoria have helped keep people housed and prevented racists from being able to act on animus toward Asians. Some of those protections expected to end Jan. 31 have now been extended, but, Evans said, \u201conce they\u2019re lifted, we anticipate a flood of activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in the meantime, the patchwork of varied rules, requirements and what different courts will accept make dispensing one-size-fits-all advice impossible, he said. So, he said, people should not hesitate to call the Advancing Justice-LA numbers for advice specific to their circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were expecting that most of the questions coming in would be pre-eviction issues with landlords \u2013 threats to take eviction actions in the near future,\u201d Evans said. So far, those expectations have been proven correct, he said, as the program prepares for its first clinic session, on Feb. 9.<\/p>\n

Among the problems reported so far have been failures to maintain properties, improper \u201cnotice to vacate\u201d \u2013 eviction threats delivered verbally or by text messages, for instance, and threats of restraining orders against tenants without cause.<\/p>\n

The clinics will be held on the second Tuesday of every month (Feb 9, March 9, April 13, May 11, June 8, July 13, Aug. 10, Sept. 14, Oct. 12, Nov. 9, and Dec. 14) from 6-8 p.m. PST, but appointments are only a phone call away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Mark Hedin\u00a0|\u00a0Feb 4, 2021\u00a0|\u00a0Immigrant Rights Also...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31425,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31424\/revisions\/31425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}