In the trenches with the poor

The client spread her do-it-yourself divorce paperwork onto the twin bed with penguin sheets so her lawyer could see.

But first, Pat Ford ran to his car to get his glasses.

The 67-year-old Legal Aid attorney wears contacts but had stuffed his reading glasses into his navy-blue pinstripe suit coat, had thrown the coat in the back seat of his 10-year-old Lexus and had loosened his tie before walking into the homeless shelter on Q Street.

He doesn’t typically dress up for his weekly visit to the Stephen Center, where a white guy in a suit might be the subject of suspicion.

But it couldn’t be helped on this brisk morning. He had an early court appearance on behalf of Martin, a 46-year-old laid-off asbestos remover seeking to lower his child-support obligation.

The divorced father of two was supporting his elderly mother and had already pawned his belongings and borrowed from friends. Getting about $300 a week in unemployment benefits, he was struggling to make ends meet. The state argued that Martin’s net income after paying child support put him just over the government’s poverty threshold, making him ineligible for a reduction.

The court referee agreed.

Ford just shook his head. Martin will be homeless.

The lawyer hears it all the time: How does someone land on the street?

Like this.

Job loss. Medical emergency. Bills. Bam.

For the moment, all Ford could do was offer Martin coffee and a lift to the downtown Y.

Now, about to meet Desiree, his third client of the day, Ford had fetched his glasses and returned to his Stephen Center “office.” The room, used by the shelter’s overnight volunteer, has a phone, a copy machine and that bed, which for Ford’s purposes serves as a conference table.

The 28-year-old mother of four wanted out of her marriage to a man in prison. And she wanted out of the shelter, where she had been living for a month while her kids were in foster care.

As Legal Aid’s chief lawyer for Omaha’s homeless (or near-homeless), Ford visits clients where they live be it Martin’s Bellevue apartment or the area’s maxed-out homeless shelters.

This visit would be brief. Though full with 80 men, women and children, Stephen Center is a fraction the size of the much larger Siena-Francis House and Open Door Mission. Three hours at them, and Ford needs Glenlivet.

It takes two shots at a South Omaha meatpackers’ bar to decompress.

Scotch, humor, writing he has kept a journal since childhood stave off burnout. A desire to help keeps him in the trenches where stories of human misery play out in their legal requests.

Family law consumes more than half his time: divorce, domestic violence, visitation and child custody, a chicken-and-egg issue for the homeless. Which came first losing the home or losing the kids?

It was the home for one of Ford’s former clients who couldn’t afford her apartment after her cheating husband left. First came eviction, then came the Stephen Center, and her husband went to court for custody.

On top of family law is the raft of financial issues: bankruptcies, access to government benefits, debts, evictions.

Then identification documents. Can’t get a Social Security card without a birth certificate. Can’t get a birth certificate without other I.D. People at shelters often have neither.

The legal needs of the poor are many. Available attorneys are few.

That’s despite a patchwork quilt of services: volunteer lawyers who staff courthouse desks in Omaha, Lincoln and Grand Island; privately run advocacy organizations; law school clinics and Legal Aid of Nebraska.

The granddaddy of the group, with its Omaha roots stretching back to the early 1960s, Legal Aid is also the giant with a $5.5 million annual budget and a stable of 35 attorneys and five offices.

Last year, Legal Aid served some 11,500 clients.

A drop in the bucket.

By one estimate, the state’s legal services for the poor serve fewer than one in five eligible Nebraskans.

Ford saw the tidal wave of need at a recent event for homeless people held at Creighton University’s Kiewit Fitness Center. They were bused to campus so they could apply for myriad services. More than 50 lined up at his table for legal advice. He signed up 28 as clients.

Law for the homeless requires someone who isn’t easily daunted by process, by location or by clients whose complaints only begin with their lack of an address.

To succeed, you need to navigate bureaucracy, shrug off chaos and not wilt in the face of suffering.

Enter Ford.

Balding, with a beard that’s way more salt than pepper, he’s the picture of experience.

His résumé, four decades long eight years of it at Omaha’s Legal Aid office is testament to that: Law school at Boston College. Representing American Indians on California’s second-largest reservation. Running the Monterey Legal Aid Society. Working for the King of Torts, the late Melvin Belli. Doing private practice.

Then, there’s Ford’s South Omaha boyhood, growing up the only child of a mailman father and print operator mother. His Jesuit education (Prep, Creighton, Boston College) that he says led him away from Catholicism (though his office features a quote from St. Augustine). His coming of age in the turbulent 1960s with the hippie hair his parents hated and his pledge to go to Canada if drafted (he got a medical deferment). His cross-country move from Boston to San Francisco in a Volkswagen bus. His Berkeley girlfriend. His world travels, his job with the bombastic, sue-happy Belli that once paid $500,000 a year. The brain aneurysm that nearly killed him and wiped out his finances. His bankruptcy filing. His father’s death. His return to Omaha.

All of this is testament to that kind of unofficial and yet vital experience: life.

So when Desiree’s bad luck and bad choices landed her in front of Ford, he was ready.

There she sat, her pretty face creased with worry, a missing tooth marring her smile, her ripped black jeans, black stilettos and silver choker out of place at 10 in the morning.

Friendly, avuncular, matter-of-fact, Ford got right to business.

How long had she been at the shelter? A month.

Was she working? No. Hard to find a job. She was “very overwhelmed. Very frustrated.”

Did she have a car? No.

Did she get food stamps? No.

When and where did she marry? Six years ago. In prison.

Children? Ages 10, 9, 6 and 2. She had placed an older daughter for adoption years ago. Her husband fathered the 6-year-old, but not the others. That child has had four different homes.

Ford explained his role. He would be her attorney at no charge. She could complain about him. She could fire him. But if he couldn’t get a hold of her, he would close her case.

Here was his card. He said he comes to the shelter every Thursday and could pick up her completed application next week.

Desiree left.

Client No. 4 entered with two young children.

Another divorce. The woman had a no-account husband and a boyfriend who threatened to kill her. She planned to leave town but wondered: Did she have to be present in court for her divorce?

Yes, Ford said. He gave her his home phone number.

“Legal Aid doesn’t take collect calls,” he said. “But I will.”

Ford’s boss, Dave Pantos, his old boss, Milo Alexander, and Mike Saklar, director of the Siena-Francis House, all say the same thing about Ford: People trust him and tell him their stories.

“One thing he can teach other lawyers,” said Alexander, who now works for Creighton University, “is how to be at home and at ease with folks who’ve had a very difficult time. ... That’s something you don’t get in law school.”

Earlier in Ford’s career, he went after the big guns, suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the federal government, a California police department.

He had hits and misses. His job at Legal Aid offers no avenues to big rewards or headlines. That’s because, in part, the federally funded organization is prohibited from filing class-action lawsuits or most lawsuits against the government, and collecting from clients.

Ford juggles dozens of cases, up to 150 at a time, often putting in 12-hour days and weekends.

He is paid for this “I’m not going to pretend I’ve taken a vow of poverty,” earning $60,000 a year, the upper end of Legal Aid salaries. (Incoming lawyers there just got bumped to a starting salary of $40,000, about half what they could make walking in the door at some of Omaha’s big firms).

This makes him practically rich compared with his broke clients and practically broke compared with law firm partners.

Salary, though, has never been his reward.

Ford believes in serving those who otherwise would have no legal recourse. And that population appears to be growing. The portion of his clients who had been contributing taxpayers until a sudden job loss and foreclosure or eviction has grown from one-fifth to one-third.

He’ll retire in a few years, he figures. Maybe return to California.

Until then, every time that rock rolls down the hill, he’ll keep pushing it back up.

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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