Melissa Chapman was recently awarded sole custody of her children — but only after a years-long legal battle. Her ex — who she says had a history of domestic violence against her, leading to a civil protection order — hired a private attorney to fight for custody of their children. And she says he was counting on her not being able to afford one.

“It was just very aggressive and I was getting hit left and right with motion after motion and just — it was very overwhelming,” Chapman says. “And I knew that he was counting on me not having representation.”

Chapman had owned a cleaning business, but at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she says, it “tanked.”

“I had no means of paying for an attorney,” Chapman says.

But she managed to get an attorney through Legal Aid DC, an organization that provides free legal help to people in civil court. The organization estimates it will serve 5,000 D.C. residents with civil legal needs this year – including help with evictions, help with securing protection from perpetrators of domestic violence, and help with obtaining public benefits.

But Legal Aid worries that next year, it may have to lay off staff or scale back services, because D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed a 60% cut to the program that funds them — a huge number even by the standards of this year’s austere budget proposal. Members of the D.C. Council say they’re trying to claw back the cuts to the program — called the Access to Justice initiative — but so far, they’ve only been successful in finding the money to replace about $4 million of the dollars Bowser proposed to cut next fiscal year, which would still leave the program at about half its previous funding levels.

Advocates for the funding say losing it could mean losing a host of lawyers who represent clients in need. For example, Legal Aid DC — the largest grantee for funds from the Access to Justice initiative — says 46 of its 93 employees are paid using the funds.

“If there are significant cuts here, there’s really no way that we can absorb it without cutting staff and the services they provide,” Vikram Swaruup, Legal Aid’s Executive Director, tells DCist/WAMU.

The proposed cut to the initiative is one of a host of proposed cuts to social services and the city’s economic safety net this year. Bowser says the budget reflects a set of tough economic realities: Remote work means less revenue for the city. Federal COVID relief dollars have dried up. And because of inflation, things like construction are more expensive.

As Bowser put it in her budget presentation to the D.C. Council, “Our resources are shrinking while at the same time our fixed costs are increasing.”

This means a sharp reversal to the increasing D.C. government funding Legal Aid has received over the past several years.

In fiscal year 2021, the initiative got $12 million in funding. The next fiscal year, it got $22.5 million. And in this fiscal year’s budget, the initiative was funded at $31.6 million.

Service providers say they’re still only scratching the surface of the need; they estimate that more than 80% of people in D.C. civil cases are going without a lawyer, often to their detriment: perhaps unsurprisingly, people with legal counsel fare dramatically better in civil cases than those who go without. Legal aid providers in D.C. estimated at one point last year that they were able to help 70% of clients stave off eviction, for example.

But the steady increase in funding enabled organizations to hire many more lawyers and conduct outreach to raise awareness of their services. Several organizations that provide free legal services worked together to set up a consolidated hotline for District residents facing eviction; the court now puts that number on the documents it sends out to people going through eviction proceedings so they’re aware they can reach out for free legal help.

Now those programs are potentially at risk at a time when attorneys say the need for civil legal representation is even greater than it was last year.

Sara Tennen, the Executive Director of the D.C. Volunteer Lawyers’ Project, testified before the D.C. Council on April 13 that domestic violence-related filings were significantly up in D.C. Superior Court so far this year compared to last, on pace for “an astronomical increase of 65%.”

Swaruup, with Legal Aid, says the organization has gotten double the number of eviction cases so far this year than it received in the same time last year. And with a steep cut to emergency rental assistance in Bowser’s proposed budget, advocates worry evictions will only increase further.

“Simply put,” Swaruup testified before the D.C. Council earlier this month, “the budget proposal before you is a calamity for the District’s most vulnerable residents.”

Though people who are facing charges in criminal court are constitutionally entitled to a free attorney if they can’t afford one, that isn’t the case for people involved in civil cases. If you want a lawyer for eviction proceedings, certain domestic violence-related proceedings, or a complex custody battle like Chapman’s, you have to hire one yourself. She says her custody case ended up lasting two years — and was too legally complicated for her to handle on her own.

“Without DC Legal Aid, a lot of people would be left out to dry and would have no voice,” she says. Access to free civil legal services, she adds, “gives people a voice, and makes sure that they’re not railroaded or bullied.”

In many cases, access to a civil lawyer is the difference between getting evicted and staying in your home — or between getting forcibly displaced in a disruptive way, or having more time to find new housing.

Judith Sandalow, Executive Director of the Children’s Law Center, recently testified before the D.C. Council that their legal work advocating for children living in unsafe housing keeps kids out of the emergency room. And she says this actually saves money in costs to Medicaid — to the tune of about $10,000 in the first 18 months of their average housing conditions case.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the D.C. Council’s judiciary committee, told DCist/WAMU she agreed that preserving access to free legal help should be a city priority.

“When we help ensure that somebody is not evicted from their home, that is helping us with our goal of preventing homelessness. When we help support a domestic violence survivor that is helping us ensure that that incident doesn’t later lead to a homicide. And so I think it’s really important that the whole council and really the whole government remembers and refocuses this conversation about access to justice as a real public safety issue,” Pinto says.

The Bowser administration has not provided a clear explanation for why it chose to disproportionately cut Access to Justice funds. When Pinto asked Jennifer Porter, the Director of the Office of Victims Services and Justice Grants (the agency in charge of giving out those funds) about how the funding decisions were made, she said the choices had to do with preserving essential public safety “infrastructure” at a time when money is tight.

“I think we’re looking at this unprecedented time, making sure that an infrastructure exists,” she said. “Where are these services and resources – where do they exist in the community? And is this something where we can work together with the community to make sure it exists?”

DCist/WAMU reached out to the city for clarification on the statement, and with other questions about the budget cuts, but did not hear back by publication time.

Every year, D.C.’s budget process starts with the Mayor, who provides the D.C. Council with a budget proposal that states her priorities for the city’s next fiscal year. After that, the council’s committees hold a series of hearings with D.C. government agency heads and residents to hear feedback on the proposal. Then, committees put forward their own budget proposals, offering proposed changes to the Mayor’s draft.

This week, Pinto’s committee – the judiciary committee – unveiled its proposed changes to the budget, and voted to send them to the full council for consideration. In that version, Pinto said she and her committee staff were able to cobble together enough funds to restore $3.85 million to the Access to Justice program’s budget. But that still leaves the program $14.8 million short from its current funding levels. Her committee urged the full council to find additional funding to close the gap — but it’s unclear where exactly that money will come from in a tight budget cycle where numerous other programs are decrying Bowser’s proposed cuts.

“When the budget gets to the council, it’s all about trade-offs and figuring out where we’re finding additional funds,” Pinto told DCist/WAMU on Wednesday. “We prioritized finding funding for Access to Justice heavily with the funds that we were able to find in our agencies, from agency savings and things like that. We really did as much as we possibly could with our committee.”

At the next stage in the budget process, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson consolidates the committee reports into one full budget — and Pinto is hoping that he will find additional funds for Access to Justice during that process. The full council will take its first of two votes on the full budget in mid-May.

Mendelson, for his part, has expressed support for funding the initiative. In a statement criticizing Bowser’s proposed budget after it was released, Mendelson said it contained “poor choices” that “set back recovery for low and middle income residents” — and specifically called out the cuts to legal services.

Swaruup says even with the extra $4 million Pinto added back, Legal Aid simply won’t be able to operate at the necessary capacity. The group is still asking the council to maintain its fiscal year 2023 level of funding.

“Fortunately, various Council Committees just took steps to address these cuts, but much more is needed,” Swaruup said in a statement Wednesday. “We urge the full Council to complete what the Judiciary Committee has started and restore funds for civil legal services and other critical programs for our client community.”

Chapman is hoping the cuts are reversed too; when she found out D.C. officials were considering such a significant reduction to the program’s funding, she ended up deciding to testify before the D.C. Council to express her concern.

“I thought about how many other people are out there that are facing circumstances like me that can’t afford representation and are not receiving justice,” she says. “I just want to stress the importance of marginalized communities. Their needs are rising, but the resources to help them are decreasing. And it’s a shame.”