Aging in America News

| Q&A with LCE’s Rhonda Cunningham Holmes

| Legal Counsel for the Elderly (LCE) provides free legal and social work services to older residents of Washington, D.C. The organization, which is a charitable affiliate of AARP, just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Comprising more than 70 staff, including attorneys and social workers, it impacts 10,000 Washingtonians a year. Aging in America News spoke to Rhonda Cunningham Holmes, MBA, J.D., who has led LCE since 2018. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does LCE do? And how does it differ from what people picture?

When people think of legal services, they immediately go to things like going to court and fighting about something. But actually, a lot of what we do involves making sure people have access to the public benefits to which they’re entitled. Right now, people are concerned about losing access to SNAP and Medicaid. There’s a big veteran population in the District of Columbia. We want to make sure that veterans know that they have rights to certain benefits. We help their surviving spouses get access to benefits. We are also working with the Social Security Administration to try and make sure people can get an answer on the phone. Sometimes we’re educating Social Security Administration about the rule of law. AARP was really a big part of the fight to make sure people didn’t have to physically go to the office for certain things. It seems that whenever an attorney’s involved, it helps a lot.  

How does AARP support LCE?

LCE is a charitable affiliate of AARP. Although we’re an independent nonprofit organization, we receive financial and back office support. There is a huge advantage of being associated with AARP. Their mission and ours are very much aligned.

When people call LCE’s hotline, who do they talk to?

We have great attorneys who we give them an appointment with, and, if it’s a quick legal issue, then we’ll try and help them, or they may need extended services. We also are proactive in that we are trying to educate people as to their rights and what it is that they should be doing to take care of themselves and put themselves in the best positions possible. We do get very interesting characters who call our hotline. 

Do any come to mind? 

Well, I will not say any by name, but we get people who are well-known. They just want some legal advice and they may even be able to afford to go to an attorney and get legal advice, but we will help on anything they may be interested in knowing, such as burial benefits. They may have a parking ticket that they feel like they want to dispute, or they may be an entrepreneur and they’re not able to get their license renewed. So we will help on any legal issue. 

In what ways does LCE help older Washingtonians with housing, which is a big issue in D.C. and other cities?

In D.C., it’s the older adults who are the largest growing population of people who are unhoused. Just for our purposes, I’ll call him Mr. C, and he got behind on his mortgage during the pandemic and he had lost his job. He tried to apply for some of the programs that D.C. had, but he had technology barriers. The paperwork was out of control, and it was just very difficult for him to manage the technology and get everything submitted that he was supposed to submit. We were able to teach him how to use his phone to complete certain applications. We helped him to complete the application for financial assistance. We filed for several forbearances for him, because he was very concerned about foreclosure on his house. Once we were able to get him financial assistance for his home we made sure that he had a will in place, because he has a son with disabilities and he wanted to make sure the son was taken care of after he passes away. 

Mr. C. was a homeowner. What about renters?

We had a client who was threatened with eviction. She was paying her rent, but the landlord was applying the money to parking fees and other things. The client thought she was going to end up in a hotel. She had grandchildren. She wanted to make sure they were able to stay in the school district that they were in. We came in and helped to negotiate a payment plan and to made sure that they were applying the rent she paid to her rent. And she was able to stay in her home. Now, all of our cases don’t end that way. And we may not be able to do as much on the affordability part, because landlords will hike up the prices if they’re allowed to. 

How did you get into this work?

When I was growing up, my mother spent time with older people from our church, going to visit people in nursing homes, going to see about them and see if they were happy, because isolation is a very real thing. I also remember my great-grandmother living with my grandmother as she was getting older.  And in different activities that I’ve participated in, from church activities to Girl Scouts and other things, there have been opportunities to interact with older people. Then in college I took some gerontology classes. Later, at the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, we oftentimes had class action suits based upon the fact that a population—whether it was an older population or a population that was living with a disability—wasn’t being treated fairly. So when I was approached about the position with LCE, I felt that this was an opportunity to have an impact. I had the legal skills, the business skills, and my education to do the work of leading this organization. 

When you think about the next 50 years, what do you want to see? 

Of course, I really want to see us go away because we’re no longer needed, but unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to see that in my lifetime. So, instead I want to position the organization to continue serving some of the most vulnerable members of our community, helping them to secure the resources and support they need to live comfortably and age with dignity.