Skagit Legal Aid

General Civil Legal Services: Skagit Legal Aid expands access to the civil justice system for historically underserved communities and identifies and eliminates barriers that perpetuate injustice, poverty, and racism. We maximize our impact with limited resources through the delivery of effective and economical civil legal services affecting housing, family, health and financial security, and immigration. We believe that resolving unmet civil legal needs makes our community a more equitable, happier, healthier, and safer place to live and work. We prioritize our services to historically underrepresented communities in the greater Skagit Valley, including tenants at risk of homelessness, people without lawful immigration status, tribal communities, and justice involved individuals. Our geographic service area is a vast expanse of land stretching from the North Cascades Mountains to the islands of the Salish Sea.In 2023, our impact reached far and wide to improve the lives of the people we served. The year witnessed a surge in client engagement. We assisted nearly a thousand individuals across a spectrum of legal areas. This marked a pivotal moment, surpassing our organization's service records over the past decade. Notably, more than half of these cases addressed non-housing issues. Over two-thirds of our clients identified as black, indigenous, or people of color, with over 40% being immigrants without U.S. citizenship, and a quarter preferring Spanish or Mixteco. This reflects not only the breadth of our impact but also our dedication to serving the needs of underserved populations. Our commitment to the Indigenous, Hispanic, and Latino communities stands as a cornerstone of our mission. One of our most impactful and well-received initiatives is the weekly clinic hosted at the CCS Farmworker Center (FWC). Remarkably, almost a quarter of all clients served in 2023 initially connected with us through the FWC. Throughout the summer, our direct in-person outreach events at farms spanning Skagit, Whatcom, and San Juan Counties reached hundreds of predominantly Indigenous farmworkers, fostering essential connections within these communities. Our unique collaboration with El Consulado de Mxico en Seattle (Consulate) proved highly successful, facilitating the acquisition of identification documents for hundreds of local immigrants. Moreover, our dedicated immigration clinics in Mount Vernon and Bellingham played a crucial role in providing education and empowerment to a particularly vulnerable segment of northwest Washington.We undertook a multifaceted project aimed at enhancing the provision of culturally competent civil legal services to tribal members in the Skagit Valley. The project encompassed the stabilization of legal clinics on the Swinomish Reservation, engagement with other sovereign tribes in the region, and the creation of a tribal law externship program through Seattle University School of Law.In the realm of tenant defense, SLA strengthened our services in Skagit and San Juan Counties and played a pivotal role in closing gaps in Whatcom and Island Counties, ensuring equitable access to counsel for all tenants in northwest Washington. A notable achievement was the representation of over 400 tenants with nearly a quarter of these tenants involved in unlawful detainer proceedings. Through our direct participation with rental assistance, over 125 tenants received a collective $800,000.00 paid on their behalf to prevent homelessness. Bridging the gap between civil and criminal services was a continued focal point of our efforts this year Our initiatives resulted in a collective achievement of over a quarter of a million dollars in court debt relief for our clients.Furthermore, we successfully fully extended our services to encompass the neighboring islands, with a specific focus on San Juan County. The isolated geography of these islands exacerbates challenges related to poverty. After hosting an annual clinic on Orcas Island for two years, we took significant steps to establish a more comprehensive presence in San Juan County. This involved cultivating a meaningful relationship with the family resource center on San Juan Island and actively building trust within the local immigrant community, particularly those originating from Michoacan.