Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS), one of the largest and most respected legal services programs in the nation, congratulates President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on their successful election. As President-Elect Biden said in a recent speech: “We must make the promise of the country real for everybody — no matter their race, their ethnicity, their faith, their identity or their disability.” We applaud his commitment to working toward a more equitable nation.
In that spirit, CLS has issued recommendations to the Biden-Harris administration’s transition teams. Our recommendations focus on concrete, actionable administrative and legislative improvements for our clients. Many of our clients are immigrants, survivors of domestic violence, low income parents of young children, older adults, people in rental housing, people returning from incarceration, people with disabilities, and minimum wage workers. Often based on race or ethnicity, our clients have borne the brunt of many harmful federal policies over the last few years, and now many are being disproportionately harmed by the pandemic.
We are optimistic about the promise of change, though we know from our decades of advocacy that our clients can be left behind in even the most well-intentioned policy transformations. We stand ready to work alongside the Biden-Harris Administration, as we have with many other transition teams and administrations, to ensure that our clients’ lives get better over the next four years, and we look forward to sharing our expertise and our resources to help make that happen.
CLS Recommendations
Restore the Safety Net for Low Wage Workers in the Pandemic
Ensure Affordable, Safe, Stable, Healthy and Accessible Rental Housing
Strengthen Our Key Safety Net Programs to Help the Most Vulnerable
Reform SSI and SSDI to Ensure Benefits are Accessible to Those Who Need Them
Preserve and Expand Low-Income Homeownership
