Lone Star Legal Aid

Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) is one of the largest civil legal aid programs in the United States. Headquartered in Houston, it operates 14 offices and serves 72 counties in East Texas and along the Texas Gulf Coast. LSLA has a client population of roughly two million people at 125 percent of federal poverty limits. Its free legal services are critical to ensuring that clients’ voices are heard, their rights are protected, and basic human needs are met. LSLA’s Environmental Justice Team focuses on the right to fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens and the right to equal protection from environmental hazards. This award supports the work of the Environmental Justice Team, which works with underserved, low-income communities that live too close to environmental hazards, such as refinery pollution, concrete batch plants, and other industrial operators, to ensure that they have the same right to clean air and water as other populations.

Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) is one of the largest civil legal aid programs in the United States. Headquartered in Houston, it operates 14 offices and serves 72 counties in East Texas and along the Texas Gulf Coast. LSLA has a client population of roughly two million people at 125 percent of federal poverty limits. Its free legal services are critical to ensuring that clients’ voices are heard, their rights are protected, and basic human needs are met. LSLA’s Environmental Justice Team focuses on the right to fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens and the right to equal protection from environmental hazards. This award supports the work of the Environmental Justice Team, which works with underserved, low-income communities that live too close to environmental hazards, such as refinery pollution, concrete batch plants, and other industrial operators, to ensure that they have the same right to clean air and water as other populations.

Established in 1948 as the Houston Legal Aid Clinic, Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA) protects and advances the civil legal rights of low-income Texans by providing advocacy, legal representation, and community education that ensures equal access to justice. LSLA annually provides services in more than 27,000 legal cases benefiting adults and children through free legal services such as eviction and foreclosure defense, advocating for payout of valid insurance claims, and civil rights protection. This award enables the organization to expand and enhance its efforts to support victims harmed by Hurricane Harvey through the civil legal aid services, primarily directed toward avoiding the reentry into the criminal justice system of poor and indigent clients facing economic and social crises created by natural disaster.