Get The Help You Need
In order to prevent homelessness before it happens, Housing Families provides free legal advice to help clients stay in their homes, including free legal services like mediation, representation in court, referrals, and legal advice, all in the effort to achieve greater housing equity and wellbeing.
The Challenge
At Housing Families, we work with individuals and families who experience homelessness, but also those who are at-risk of losing their homes. In many instances, low-income families and individuals are unable to afford legal services that can help them avoid eviction and remain in their home, and Housing Families offers free lawyers and counsel to those who may require assistance.
<1
the proportion of tenants facing eviction in housing court who have legal representation, compared to the over 90% of landlords who have representation
1
according to the Justice Index, for every 10,000 Massachusetts residents living in poverty there are under 3 free lawyers available
Our Solution
$1
For every dollar invested in Housing Families’ legal services program, $6.67 in social and economic value is created
1
evictions prevented annually by the Housing Families legal team
As an upstream approach that prevents evictions and homelessness before those traumatic events occur, Housing Families’ legal team works with low-income clients who are facing eviction to troubleshoot their housing situation and find solutions in order to preserve their tenancies. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has recognized Housing Families’ free legal services program as a best practice, which many other organizations have implemented.
Our Services
Our team provides general housing legal services free of cost to clients who are facing eviction or housing instability. These services include brief advice, referrals, advocacy, community intakes, Lawyer for the Day programs at local housing courts, limited assistance representation, and full representation.
Our team works with clients to understand the nature and root causes of their housing crises. We perform an intake to allow for a holistic assessment of the most effective method to prevent homelessness for each family. In addition to our internal resources, our team is knowledgeable about additional external resources and able to make quality referrals.
When funding is available, we provide direct financial assistance to help clients facing housing insecurity with costs that threaten their tenancies, such as rental or utility arrears. By granting one-time financial assistance that allows households to overcome such a cost, we can preserve tenancies, prevent evictions, and keep families stably housed.
The journey to finding new housing is often difficult and time consuming. Our team is knowledgeable about long-term solutions, urgent shelter options, and shorter-term housing possibilities. We understand barriers to finding housing and are able to make suggestions and referrals to help our clients move forward toward finding new housing.
Our team understands the complicated system for entry into the state’s Emergency Assistance (EA) family shelter. Many factors have changed since 2023, and we have continued to augment our knowledge of the system and its challenges. When staff resources allow, we are able to assist with applications for EA shelter and troubleshoot the application process.
We recently began a partnership with a large local hospital system to provide flexible housing supports to individuals experiencing housing crises. Referrals to our services come from healthcare providers, linking healthcare with housing resources. Our model blends homelessness prevention, housing problem solving, legal information, and referrals to in-house legal services as necessary.
Housing Families operates the City of Malden’s Office of Housing Stability, which helps residents find and keep housing by providing services, assistance, and information to Malden renters, homeowners, and landlords. Services include rental assistance, eviction prevention, legal assistance, landlord-tenant mediation, housing search, fuel assistance and more.
An important part of our work is making sure our clients understand their legal rights and know how to assert them. We also connect tenants to homelessness prevention funding and help them navigate through the application process.
Heather Van Orman, Esq.
Associate Director, Legal Services