One of the nation’s premier poverty law centers, Bet Tzedek's mission is to pursue equal justice for all. Together, we can protect the legal rights of the poor and create new pathways out of poverty. In communities decimated by poverty, Bet Tzedek helps people of every race and religion secure vital necessities like safe and affordable housing, fair wages, health care, and public benefits. Clients receive the free, compassionate and expert assistance that has been the hallmark of Bet Tzedek Legal Services since 1974. (Bet Tzedek does not handle criminal defense, immigration, divorce, or cases private attorneys would accept on contingency.)

Elder Law Project
Bet Tzedek is the exclusive provider of free legal services to low-income seniors in both the City and County of Los Angeles, offering outreach, education and advocacy to seniors at more than 30 community centers county-wide.  As the number of low-income elderly Americans rapidly expands, seniors are confronted with overwhelming fraud and injustice, and forced to navigate an infrastructure profoundly unequipped to meet their needs.  Bet Tzedek's nationally acclaimed Elder Law Project uses unique, practical, and effective strategies to address these issues.  The Elder Law Project also conducts Legal Clinics designed to help seniors help themselves.  These clinics are a highly effective tool for reaching - and successfully assisting - a large number of seniors in need.  

Employment Rights Project (ERP)
Bet Tzedek’s Employment Rights Project advocates on behalf of a variety of low-income workers, human trafficking victims, and sweatshop employees - regardless of immigration status.  Clients include day laborers, domestic workers, and those working in the garment, construction, car wash, restaurant and janitorial industries. ERP services range from brief advice, counseling and informal advocacy, to representation in hearings before the California Labor Commissioner and litigation in state and federal courts.  Furthermore, the ERP offers the only Worker’s Clinic in the San Fernando Valley, supporting the needs of garment industry and day laborers with convenient evening hours. 

Family Caregiver Project
In America today, one in every four households is involved in providing care for an individual over the age of 50.  Bet Tzedek’s Family Caregiver Project provides legal counseling, advice and representation to English-speaking and Spanish-speaking adults who provide in-home care for a family member.  In addition to providing direct legal services to caregivers and their families, Project staff regularly conduct community legal education presentations for health-care professionals, social workers and caregivers.  These presentations are conducted in Spanish, English and Asian-Pacific Islander languages. 

Financial Literacy & Consumer Protection Project
Bet Tzedek's Consumer Protection Project is a vital lifeline for the thousands of low-income Los Angeles residents victimized by consumer fraud, unlawful debt collection, and predatory lending scams.  In addition to providing free multi-lingual representation to low-income consumer fraud victims, the Project offers educational programs throughout L.A. County that help residents recognize and avoid fraud.  Ultimately, this innovative Project expands opportunities for low-income Angelenos to build and protect personal and financial assets, and removes knowledge and information barriers that block access to financial well-being.

Kinship Care Project
The Kinship Care Project addresses the needs of the more than 88,000 children in Los Angeles County who live with their grandparents when parents are unavailable or unable to provide care.  This Project offers advocacy, legal representation and education to kinship caregivers and is unique in Los Angeles County. No other service provider focuses on this population. The assistance provided by the Kinship Care Project keeps children out of the foster care system, and ensures that all available government benefits are accessed, that health care is provided, and that rights to decent and safe housing are preserved.

Holocaust Reparations Project
Bet Tzedek is the only agency in the world that offers free help to survivors who are applying for reparations, pensions and other benefits. The Holocaust Reparation Project is one of Bet Tzedek's signature programs, providing free legal assistance to low-income survivors of the Holocaust.  The Project is at the forefront of issues affecting all survivors, including Holocaust-era insurance coverage, the effect of reparations on eligibility for public benefits, and the waiver of wire transfer fees for survivors who receive reparations.

Housing Conditions & Homelessness Prevention Project
Every day, Bet Tzedek offers help to low-income Angelenos who have been victimized by unlawful evictions, slum housing conditions, and predatory home equity fraud. Our services offer powerful, high-impact individual and community advocacy that helps low-income residents secure safe, affordable housing. In a city where average rents have jumped 82% in the last ten years and thousands of hard-working Angelenos live in apartments without toilets, running water, heat, electricity, or even glass in the windows, Bet Tzedek directly protects tenants’ rights through free representation, litigation, outreach, education, and community development.

Nursing Home Advocacy Project (NHAP)
NHAP is a national leader in advancing the rights of residents of long-term care facilities and their families—winning protection from egregious abuse and neglect, dramatic improvements for residents’ quality of care, and the preservation of patient legal rights and autonomy.  The Project offers a comprehensive service portfolio of litigation, legal counseling and education, and produces a library of highly respected consumer guides, including The Nursing Home Companion, now in its seventh printing, with more than 200,000 copies distributed nationally.  

Public Benefits Project 
For many low-income families, public benefits such as Medi-Cal and disability are vital to maintining access to basic necessities like food, medicine, shelter, and transportation. When complex problems arise, Bet Tzedek’s highly specialized, free expertise helps keep families from going hungry and homeless.  This programs provides high quality assistance to people would not be able to afford legal aid elsewhere. Bet Tzedek conducts Medi-Cal and Medicare appeals on behalf of clients who have been improperly denied benefits to which they are entitled. Bet Tzedek also represents clients applying for disability benefits and other similar programs. 

Bet Tzedek was founded in 1974 by a small group of lawyers, rabbis and community activists who sought to act upon a central tenet of Jewish law and tradition: “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof: Justice, justice you shall pursue.” This doctrine establishes an obligation to advocate the just causes of the poor and helpless. Consistent with this mandate, Bet Tzedek has always provided assistance to all eligible needy residents of Los Angeles County, regardless of their racial, religious or ethnic background.

BET TZEDEK GHETTO REPARATIONS PROGRAM REACHES OTHER CITIES
By Anat Rubin
Daily Journal Staff Writer
March 28, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Albert Rosa's job was to pick up the dead bodies.

The year was 1943, and the Germans had just crushed the monthlong resistance that would come to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Rosa was there with thousands of other Jews to clean up the mess and destroy what was left of the ghetto.

The bodies, Rosa said, were everywhere.

"There were maggots and worms all over them," he said, his voice breaking. "They were crawling out of their mouths and nose and ears."

Rosa, 83, told his story Thursday to a volunteer attorney from Latham & Watkins at the Bet Tzedek "Ghetto Work" reparations clinic.

Bet Tzedek established the clinic last year in response to the German government's creation of a new reparations program aimed at compensating Holocaust survivors who worked in German-controlled ghettos.

The German government estimates 50,000 survivors alive today could be eligible for the one-time payment of about $3,000. Some 20,000 of those survivors are in the United States.

"This is probably one of the last, if not the last, program coming out of Germany," said Bet Tzedek attorney Volker Schmidt. "Most of our clients are in their 80s and 90s. One of our clients is 104."

Bet Tzedek attorney Wendy Levine said the German government is not offering a lot of money. But for many survivors, Levine said, it's one last chance for justice.

"We have many clients who have never wanted to talk about the Holocaust and now are at a point in their lives where they want to tell their story and they want somebody to be held accountable," said Levine, who runs the clinic with Schmidt.

For others, she said, the money is critical. At least 25 percent of survivors in the United States are living below the poverty line.

"We have survivors who previously said, 'I don't want Germany's money,' and now they're at a point where they need it," Levine said. "A lot of our clients are living in dire circumstances. This money makes a huge difference."

In just four months, Bet Tzedek has helped 350 survivors file claims.

"The response has been extraordinary," Levine said.

So extraordinary, in fact, that Bet Tzedek is expanding the program to cities across the country.

With help from pro bono attorney Stan Levy of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Bet Tzedek will train pro bono attorneys and match them with social service agencies to help survivors file claims.

"Many of these social service providers are aware of the [reparations] program but have not sent out mass mailings yet because they're afraid of being overwhelmed," Levy said. "It's a very specific program and a relatively complicated form with vague questions."

The Ghetto Work Payment Program is not for those who were forced to work during the war.

"If you were in a forced-labor camp, that's different," Levy said.

The German government offered compensation to victims of forced labor in a program that ended in 2006. The new program stipulates the applicants must have worked voluntarily, meaning they had some level of choice in how the work was performed.

"In the ghetto, even if you weren't forced to work, you had to work," Levy said. "No one was holding a gun to their head, but they worked to survive."

Ruth Kirschner, a social worker with Jewish Social Services in Washington, D.C., said she would welcome the legal assistance Bet Tzedek is offering.

"It would make a huge difference," Kirschner said. "This is not our area of expertise.

"Every time you file a claim, it dredges up all the emotional baggage. It's horrific. At the end of each application, it says, 'Please include any documents you have to prove you were there,' and it starts everyone crying. They say, 'What documents? I don't even have a picture.'"

Levine said that's the reason some survivors eligible for past reparations programs didn't apply.

"They have to relive the worst atrocities of their lives and have those atrocities reduced to little boxes on a piece of paper to send to the country that perpetrated the atrocities so it can make a decision about whether they suffered enough," she said. "We want to make sure they feel like they're stories are being heard and that they have advocates on their side."

When Rosa talks about the family he lost, his voice breaks again.

"Seventy members of my family were wiped out," he said. "I'm the only one alive."

After his work in the ghetto, Rosa was marched, with 30,000 other Jews, to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. He was one of the few to survive the march.

He made his way through several concentration camps before he was able to escape, hiding inside a barn full of manure. When he ran across the American troops, he joined them.

"I have five medals from the U.S. Army, including a purple heart," he said."I've never taken anything from the U.S. welfare system," he said. "But from Germany, I'll take every penny I can get."

Copyright 2008 Daily Journal Corp, Reprinted and/or posted with permission

Alzheimer's Issues  ·  Benefits Overpayments  ·  Caregiver Issues  ·  Conservatorships/Guardianships  ·  Consumer Fraud  ·  Elder Abuse & Neglect  ·  Holocaust Reparations  ·  Home Equity Fraud/Home Improvement Fraud  ·  In-Home Supportive Services  ·  Kinship Care Issues: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren  ·  Landlord-Tenant Issues  ·  Long-Term Care Issues  ·  Nursing Home Problems  ·  Patients' Rights/Quality of Care  ·  Power of Attorney for Health Care & Finances  ·  Social Security, Medi-Cal & Medicare  ·  SSI/Disability Benefits Appeals  ·  Substandard Housing Conditions  ·  Unlawful Debt Collection  ·  Veteran's Benefits  ·  Wage Claims
  
Bet Tzedek does not handle criminal defense, immigration, divorce, or cases private attorneys would accept on contingency. Legal assistance includes counseling and representation at trials, administrative hearings and appeals.