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Miller, Apodaca team up on legal aid for veterans

Veterans at risk of losing their homes or jobs or custody of their children often have nowhere to turn as they battle courts or the slow-grinding wheels of the Veterans Administration.

Advocates for veterans say the one thing that helps the most is something veterans usually don’t have: a lawyer.
“It happens a lot,” said Jeff Miller, the local dry cleaner whose avocation is honoring veterans and helping those with needs. “I’ll go to different attorneys here in town that I can kind of count on and they step up for most part and try to help.”
Miller came to realize that a more efficient broader effort was needed. To make it happen, he teamed up with Pisgah Legal Services and began lobbying the Legislature to fund legal aid for veterans. After some rough sailing in the closing days of this year’s legislative session, the General Assembly appropriated $100,000 for a pilot program to operate out of Pisgah Legal Services.
“A lot of times lawmakers don’t like these organizations because sometimes they feel like they go against them,” Miller said. When the funding stalled in the state House, Miller appealed to Sen. Tom Apodaca, an old friend and longtime political ally.
“Tom was like, ‘OK, let me see if I can find another route for this,’” he said. Late in the session “there’s so many people fighting for the last pennies. Tom ended up salvaging it.”
Speaking recently at Business Morning Update, Apodaca mentioned the legal aid program as one of his significant achievements.
“One thing we were able to do was to get additional funds for returning veterans to help them deal with problems they face coming back into society after serving their country,” Apodaca said. “I think that’s some of the best money we’ll spend.”
Jim Barrett, executive director of Pisgah Legal Services, said the agency’s record shows lawyers can cut through red tape and get help quickly.
“We’re very thrilled to get the funding,” he said. “We do not expect to handle veterans disability issues. Those are fee generating and private attorneys can do that. But there are lots of cases that veterans need help for basic needs, in particular those that are homeless.”
Attorneys can help veterans who have a poor credit history get apartments or help some with minor criminal records get jobs or housing. “We can help them get SSI so they can get their veterans benefits and with that comes Medicaid,” he said. Lawyers may also help veterans get mental health treatment or subsidized housing.
“We already do that for lots of people,” he said. “This will just be hopefully an expansion of the kinds of things we’ve been doing and we’re eager to demonstrate success so we can get funding beyond the one year that Apodaca arranged. We’re very grateful to Sen. Apodaca for the one year.”
Barrett said he expects the money to cover at least 200 cases. The seed money could fund more than $100,000 worth of legal work because Pisgah Legal plans to use part of it administratively to recruit more volunteer lawyers.
“There’s no substitute for timely legal advice in this complicated world,” Barrett said.
Miller said he’s hopeful that the pilot program will grow into a statewide program that helps hundreds of veterans.
“It’s going to be a very distinct and defined process and they will be able to show us the results,” he said. “Maybe we can take these findings and increase it in the coming years until the V.A. gets itself together.” Because people know of his commitment to veterans, he often sees heart-breaking cases of someone who served in war only to be let down back home by an impenetrable labyrinth of federal regulations.
“I’ve been seeing it so long it’s hard not to get depressed yourself,” he said. “This program is a pilot program and I hope that in a year’s time we can make it something that can help” those veterans. “It could mean that for 200 people we could save their homes, save their marriage, save their families and keep from going down one more level toward homelessness, toward desperation, toward suicide. That’s 200 people here in Western North Carolina. It’s worth the time and it’s worth the effort.”