Your donation to Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society's Veteran's Advocacy Project concentrates in removing barriers to wellbeing and overall health for eligible Palm Beach County veterans, their family and caregivers, and service members through the provision of free legal civil advice, consultation, representation and education related to housing, child support modifications, increasing V.A. disability ratings, requested upgrades to the character of discharge from the U.S. Armed Forces, and access to healthcare.
The Veterans Advocacy Project’s primary focus is to assist unhoused or housing unstable and/or at-risk veterans with legal matters that are creating barriers to achieving housing stability.
The Veterans Advocacy Project offers legal representation in housing, court, or mediation and negotiation to prevent unlawful evictions, resolve landlord-tenant disputes, defend against housing discrimination, and fight mortgage foreclosures in order to prevent homelessness. The Project also helps eligible disabled veterans and service members covered under the Fair Housing Act, who may need assistance with reasonable accommodations and modifications so they may remain in their home.
The VAP also offers assistance in court proceedings related to child support modifications; injunctions for protection for victims of domestic or intimate partner violence; simple estate planning assistance with the preparation of documents such as wills, advance directives and guardianships.
The VAP assists with an array of legal issues that may impact a veteran’s ability to obtain and maintain housing, employment and self-sufficiency. These can include restoring revoked or suspended driver’s licenses; replacing identification documents; correcting errors in criminal records and obtaining expungements, seals or pardons; credit card collection, garnishments, usury, resolving errors and removing inaccurate items in credit reports; and converting outstanding court costs to community service hours in order to have records cleared.
The VAP works to assist veterans gain access to the care, benefits and support earned by their military service and will challenge wrongful denials of veterans benefits by adjusting military discharge status or receiving a character of service determination.
In addition to providing one-on-one assistance at the monthly VA Medical Center legal clinics, VAP staff conducts educational seminars for veterans and service members to increase their knowledge of their legal rights and how to assert them. VAP staff also provides ongoing training to VA Medical Center staff, equipping them with the ability to recognize and identify legal issues that may impact a veteran or service member’s overall health and wellbeing, and how to refer patients to Veterans Advocacy Project staff for services. The Project also performs regular outreach and community education for clients and community service partners
VAP has also established a Legal Partnership with the West Palm Beach VA in Palm Beach County. There is a clinic held on the 3rd Wednesday of each month from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the West Palm Beach VA Healthcare System.
