Four years ago this week, inspired by the Jewish teachings of “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” or “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” Tzedek DC launched as a public interest center headquartered at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law. We remain committed to our original mission of safeguarding the legal rights and financial health of DC residents with low incomes in debt-related crises. In response to the deep disparities that track race in our community and arise as a result of long-term structural racism, we pursue this mission as anti-racism work.
Since that launch, we have:
Direct Legal Services: Represented over 2,000 DC residents with debt-related legal problems, securing relief that saved clients an average of over three weeks’ worth of wages at the DC minimum wage.
Systemic Reform: Won population-level relief through systemic reforms to end the suspension of driver’s licenses as punishment for unpaid debts, to overhaul DC’s draconian wage garnishment law, and to establish crucial emergency protections during COVID-19.
Community Outreach: Disseminated actionable debt- and credit-related guidance to over 100,000 DC residents.
However, massive and immediate challenges remain.
Now going into its twelfth month, the COVID-19 pandemic’s overlapping public health and financial crises are continuing to generate a toxic combination of reduced income, increased debt, and increased account delinquencies for DC residents. Tzedek DC’s overarching goals continue to be preventing client households from falling into the economic abyss and keeping them on the ladder towards financial stability.
In the midst of these challenges and in celebration of our fourth anniversary, we offer brief updates below on our work in each of our interconnected areas of priority.
A Tzedek DC bear demonstrates safe pandemic practices.
Direct Legal Services
Over the past four years, we have represented over 2,000 DC residents with debt-related legal problems, securing relief that saved clients an average of over three weeks’ worth of wages at the DC minimum wage.
Working remotely and in collaboration with the courts and sister agencies, we have continued throughout the pandemic to provide direct legal services for matters ranging from predatory car leases to Chapter 7 bankruptcies to unpaid medical bills charged to a gunshot victim. Recently, we have also seen a particular skyrocketing in the need for help responding to scams, as exemplified by our client Ms. Templeton.
Ms. Templeton is a 57-year-old Ward 7 resident who lives on Social Security Disability, and she is one of many people who have been victimized by scammers during the pandemic. When she noticed that something was wrong with her Cash App account (a money transfer app), she searched online for Cash App itself and found a number to call for customer assistance. Unbeknownst to her, however, the line connected Ms. Templeton to scammers who convinced her to download software that allowed them to control her phone. Horrified, she saw her banking information accessed, funds transferred to her Cash App account, and money sent to people she didn’t know.
Although Ms. Templeton protested to the “technical assistants” on the phone, they cavalierly dismissed her complaints. When she told her bank about what happened and provided extensive evidence of the fraud, the bank ignored her submission and deemed the transactions valid. She then engaged Tzedek DC’s Disabilities Community Project, and, following our advocacy, the bank returned to Ms. Templeton all the money fraudulently taken from her through the scam.
Additionally, when the current emergency prohibitions on new debt collection lawsuits, garnishments, and attachments end in May 2021, debt collectors and other creditors will seek to make up for time lost during 2020. We project a doubling in debt collection lawsuits in DC Superior Court from pre-pandemic levels. As a result, DC residents are at risk of being swamped in 2021 and into 2022 by debt collection, litigation, and credit report impairment problems that, if unchecked, will threaten thousands of families with financial ruin and long-term destabilization, with increased risks of housing insecurity and unemployment.
Tzedek DC’s overarching goals continue to be preventing client households from falling into the economic abyss and keeping them on the ladder towards financial stability.
Systemic Reform
Through our coalition-based advocacy, we have won DC population-level relief through systemic reforms over the past four years to end the suspension of driver’s licenses as punishment for unpaid debts, to overhaul DC’s draconian wage garnishment law, and to establish an innovative COVID-19 credit report protection.
Soon after the pandemic hit DC, we and our coalition partners successfully advocated for crucial emergency protections like moratoria on debt collection, wage garnishments, bank seizures, evictions, and utility cut-offs.
In addition, we obtained a first-of-its-kind right to file a COVID-19 credit report alert, which prevents end users of one’s report from factoring in missed or late payments that occurred due to hardship related to the pandemic. In partnership with the Legal Counsel for the Elderly and the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, we created a webpage that makes the declaration process transparent, simple, and fast. Through webinars and other media efforts, we have publicized both the protection itself and how the estimated 330,00 DC residents most likely to be helped by this relief can avail themselves of it.
Further, building on prior initial success in reforming DC’s wealth-based driver’s license system, we continue working to end DC’s policy of punishing residents with unpaid fines or fees by disqualifying them from renewing their driver’s licenses. The current system has significant implications for racial justice. Black DC residents are arrested more than 18 times as often as White DC residents for driving without a license. DC’s punitive law massively and disproportionately harms Black DC residents, both through the financial harm it inflicts and through the exposure to the criminal justice system it causes. This Spring, we will release a major report on the issue, titled “Driving DC to Opportunity: Wealth Should Not Determine Who Gets to Keep Their Driver’s License,” and will continue to pursue systemic reform by the DC government in concert with a coalition of DC Councilmembers as well as anti-poverty, faith-based, and business community advocates.
Community Outreach
Our legislative, educational, and advocacy successes owe much to our growing web of partnerships with like-minded local and national organizations. Exemplifying ways that community partnerships help us achieve our goals, we have:
Co-hosted webinars on “protecting your money” in Spanish and English with Capital Area Asset Builders.
Operated the daily Debt Collection Hotline with the DC Legal Aid Society and others.
Mobilized public support for credit report reforms with Color of Change and the Jewish Community Relations Council.
In concert with the Skyland Workforce Center, CARECEN, and La Clínica del Pueblo, relayed guidance to tens of thousands of DC residents.
Partnerships like these have allowed us to disseminate actionable debt- and credit-related guidance to over 100,000 DC residents over the past four years, and we will continue to grow and deepen this transformative work in the years ahead.
Likewise, our community outreach campaign, “¡Sin Deudas, Sin Dudas!”, or “No Debts, No Doubts!”, launched in late 2019. The campaign continues to promote financial empowerment among DC’s Hispanic community through a combination of webinars, digital and print ads, radio PSAs, and a Partner Toolkit for our community partners. The outreach also contributes to the goal of increasing community awareness and use of our legal services. This multimedia approach for targeting DC’s Hispanic community was developed with pro bono assistance from the communication firm LINK Strategic Partners, who will help us mount a similar community outreach campaign in 2021.
