Director, Neighborhood Stabilization and Foreclosure Prevention Project

Legal Services NYC (LSNYC) fights poverty and seeks racial, social and economic justice for low-income New Yorkers. For over 50 years, we have challenged systemic injustices that trap people in poverty and provided legal services that help our clients meet basic needs for housing, income and economic security, family and immigration stability, education, and health care. LSNYC is the largest civil legal services provider in the country; our staff of more than 600 people in neighborhood-based offices and outreach sites across all five boroughs helps hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers annually. We partner with scores of community-based and client-run organizations, elected officials, public agencies, pro bono lawyers, and the courts to maximize our effectiveness. Our work fights discrimination and helps to achieve equity for all low-income New Yorkers.

LSNYC employees have numerous opportunities for growth and professional development, including access to our internal Justice Learning Center, which provides opportunities to earn free CLEs and gain experience as a trainer. 

Immediate Job Opening

Unit Director

Neighborhood Stabilization and Foreclosure Prevention Project

Bronx Legal Services seeks a unit director for its Neighborhood Stabilization and Foreclosure Prevention Project to start immediately.

About Bronx Legal Services 

Bronx Legal Services, the largest provider of free civil legal services in the borough, is part of Legal Services NYC’s network of local programs throughout New York City. Its mission is to advance society’s promise to its most vulnerable members that they are entitled to equal access to our legal system. For over 50 years, it has provided civil legal services to help its clients meet their essential needs and has challenged the systemic injustices that keep them poor in practice areas including housing, homeowner protection, public benefits, access to healthcare, disability rights, family law, immigration law, consumer law, access to education, and employment rights. We also work with our clients and partners to identify and address root causes for systemic inequalities in the Bronx and throughout New York City.

The Position 

The mission of the Neighborhood Stabilization and Foreclosure Prevention Unit is to pursue  creative strategies and zealous advocacy in the pursuit of justice for Bronx homeowners facing foreclosure and other threats to homeownership through litigation, nonlitigation advocacy, and community education. In this work, the unit challenges and seeks to eradicate abusive lending practices and other predatory threats to homeownership in the Bronx. While the unit’s primary focus is preserving homeownership, it also works with boards of directors of Housing Development Fund Corporation buildings, nonprofit organizations and government agencies on transactional matters to help preserve existing low-income cooperatives and assists nonprofit organizations with corporate formation.

The unit director will be responsible for managing and supervising all aspects of the work of a team consisting of 4 staff attorneys and a paralegal, in addition to carrying a small caseload. The Director’s duties will include supervision of a weekly walk-in foreclosure clinic in Bronx Supreme Court, where advice and brief services are provided.

The team represents clients in all aspects of homeownership preservation, including intake and case assessment, staffing a court-based foreclosure clinic, brief advice and assistance with pro se  answers to foreclosure complaints, representing defendants at mandatory foreclosure settlement conferences and assistance with loss mitigation, and in the full range of litigation, including drafting pleadings and motions, conducting discovery, trials and arguing appeals, both in defensive foreclosure litigation and affirmative litigation challenging abusing mortgage servicing and discriminatory lending practices and providing advice to homeowners filing Chapter 7 and 13 petitions. 

The Unit also includes a small community economic development practice, which includes multiparty complex litigation, transactional work around the establishment of community land trusts, advising small businesses on legal matters, and assisting nonprofit organizations with corporate formation and applications for federal tax-exempt status.   We would like to grow this practice.

The unit director will also be responsible for managing the administrative aspects of the unit, including grant management and reporting, identifying, and pursuing new funding opportunities, monitoring client intake processes, managing day-to-day personnel issues, advocating with the courts and participating in policy advocacy and advocacy focused on funding for homeownership preservation services.