Legal aid group feeling effects of federal funding cuts
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A local organization providing legal assistance to people with disabilities is feeling the effects of federal funding cuts.
The Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut a grant worth more than $400,000 a year to Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio (LASCO). Now, the organization's senior attorney for housing is addressing how the lost funding will affect residents.
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For many Ohioans in a housing crisis, they turn to LASCO for help – an estimated 3,000 last year. Now the organization faces the task of replacing $425,000 a year in grant money.
'Legal Aid attorneys are pretty much the only ones there,' LASCO's Senior Managing Attorney for Housing Melissa Benson said. 'If you can't afford to pay your rent, you generally can't afford to hire an attorney to represent you in court.'
Benson said Franklin County and the City of Columbus provide some funding for their work, but without the grant money from U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the rest of the counties served would not have any funding.
Benson said that money last year directly helped 50 people and families in Ohio avoid eviction.
'Fair housing law protects everyone,' she said. 'It protects you regardless of your race, regardless of your gender, regardless of your national origin. Whether or not you have a disability. The state of Ohio has its own fair housing protections that include veteran's status and a number of other groups. So there are a lot of people who potentially can be discriminated against.'
LASCO works with people in 36 of Ohio's counties, many of them rural areas. This grant money is tied directly to representing people who have been discriminated against or are on disability.
'The issue that we get called about the most is disability discrimination,' Benson said. 'I think more than half of the calls that we receive are from people who have some sort of disability and are not able to use or maintain their housing the same way as someone who does not and need what's called a reasonable accommodation. For example, someone needing a ramp because they have a wheelchair and so they can't get up stairs.'
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One story of a client Benson recalled was a woman in a wheelchair who lived in an apartment building.
'She lived on the third floor of an apartment complex, and the elevator went down, and they weren't able to, they weren't repairing the elevator,' Benson said of one case. 'And she would have to crawl down the stairs, actually, to get out and it would take her an hour to get out of the complex. And we were able to use fair housing law to get them to repair the elevator.'
LASCO has already been paid for the work it's done so far in 2025 utilizing the grant money, but now it is facing a choice, continue the work already started and risk not getting paid, or stop the work already begun.
'We have to turn people away all the time because we, I have limited resources and most of them don't have any other recourse,' Benson said.
Benson said a temporary restraining order in that lawsuit against HUD could restore the grant money while the lawsuit plays out, but that could take weeks.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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