Since 2020, around 4% of Illinois residents – 560,000 – have acquired legal assistance from the Eviction Help Illinois Program. Eviction Help Illinois is a state program funded through a partnership between the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation (or IEJF). The program helps low-income Illinoisans get free legal representation if they are threatened with getting evicted from their homes.
State funding is given to a network of 16 legal providers throughout Illinois and these legal providers offer free legal assistance. One of these legal providers, Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, covers 65 counties in central and southern Illinois and offers legal advice and/or court representation in about 3,000 cases each year, according to Andrew Weaver, deputy director of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid.
“Each legal provider that is awarded funds by the IEJF helps people in the counties that they serve with some counties being covered by multiple providers,” Weaver said in an interview. This allows people in need all over Illinois to be able to find help near them, rather than having to drive to a big city far away. For example, Land of Lincoln Legal Aid alone has regional offices in nine locations all over southern and central Illinois, including one in Springfield. Land of Lincoln also has a hotline, the Legal Advice and Referral Center (LARC), that processes applicants via telephone or online application.
“The first step for applicants living in the Land of Lincoln region is to contact LARC through Land of Lincoln’s Eviction Hotline at 855-601-9474,” Weaver said. “The hotline will decide if someone is eligible for legal assistance, and if so, they will be assigned an attorney to be given advice, and/or directed to other resources.”
The hotline will also direct the applicant to a regional office near them. The regional office is where the recently accepted person will go to further discuss their case with their attorney.
Land of Lincoln has around 70 lawyers who provide legal assistance. About half do eviction work, among other kinds of law, and any of them may be assigned to an applicant’s case after they have been accepted into the program. The help given by these attorneys could be as little as giving advice to their clients or, as much as representing them in court. For example, if a person were about to get evicted and got a lawyer through Eviction Help Illinois, the lawyer could make a compromise between the person and the landlord, so that they could remain peaceful and the tenant could stay in the residence.
According to a press release, of the 560,000 people who have been given legal assistance from Eviction Help Illinois around 1,500 were helped in Sangamon County. The numbers show not only the significance this program has had on Illinois, but also locally. Even though the program has only been in operation for five years, one in 25 people in Illinois have already been helped with their housing situations.
For more information about free legal assistance through Eviction Help Illinois call 1-855-631-0811, go to https://evictionhelpillinois.org or text 1-844-9EVICT-0. If you do not qualify for legal help with one legal provider, you could still qualify with one of the other partner legal providers that are part of the Illinois program.
This article appears in The College Crisis.
When I read the recent IT story about assistance being available to persons facing eviction, by Jon Noll, I assumed it was written, as is usually the case, by someone with much experience in writing. To my surprise the writer was only a high school student. Congratulations to Jon, for his very well written letter, at such an early age!