Legal Aid of Western Missouri Economic and Housing Initiatives

Legal Aid’s Economic Development Unit represents nonprofit community organizations in neighborhood improvement activities, including creating and preserving low-income housing in Kansas City. 

Attorneys provide legal assistance to neighborhood associations seeking to remedy vacant and blighted homes, to nonprofit social service providers helping low-income residents, to community development corporations seeking to rehabilitate and develop residential units in their neighborhoods, and to low-income individuals seeking to cure their homes’ title issues. 

Legal services include property acquisition, financing, title clearance, real estate closing and syndication, tax abatement, zoning, applications for tax exemption, nonprofit formation, and contracts with service providers.
 
Through our Abandoned Housing Project, Economic Development staff address the problem of vacant lots and abandoned and blighted properties by working with community partners to identify and take possession of vacant lots and abandoned properties. When city enforcement procedures are inadequate to remedy a dilapidated/blighted condition, staff can negotiate with or file a lawsuit against the offending property owner, who is often an absentee landlord. This legal intervention can result in rehabilitation of a property or, if necessary, its demolition.  
 
Adopt-A-Neighborhood is a collaborative project between Legal Aid, private law firms, and eastside neighborhoods in Kansas City, MO. Their goal is to help urban core communities address quality of life concerns by providing high-quality legal service to qualifying individuals, neighborhood associations, and local non-profit organizations that serve the neighborhoods.

To find out more about Legal Aid of Western Missouri, go to their website at www.lawmo.org