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BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 Federal student loan debt has accumulated to more than $1.6 trillion. That accounts for almost 93% of student loan debt spread out across almost 43 million borrowers.<\/p>\n
With the average debt sitting at just under $38,000, there are a lot of people who could use help. There are a growing number of places to find it.<\/p>\n
“We help with eviction housing conditions, things like family, divorce, custody, any issues like that,” said Sarah Hill of Neighborhood Legal Services in Buffalo. “We also assist with public benefits. So that would be any issues like SNAP.”<\/p>\n
Hill wears many hats at Neighborhood Legal Services.<\/p>\n
“Just anything anybody needs over around the office if they don’t meet me don’t have time to do it themselves,” Hill said. “So I’m just kind of an all-around, everybody, maybe a little mini janitor.”<\/p>\n
While she\u2019s not one of the non-profit lawyers helping people, she sees and hears results firsthand.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Once I can tell them that, you know, we can assist them and we can put them through to become a new client,” said Hill. “You can just hear it in their voices, even the relief that they feel that they’re finally being able to get some help.<\/p>\n
Hill sets clients up with attorneys like Karen Welch.<\/p>\n
“We just represent the clients that are traditionally underrepresented by the legal system,” said Welch who is the supervising attorney of the disability law unit with Neighborhood Legal Services.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With some recent help from grant funding, they can focus on helping with crippling student debt.<\/p>\n
“We just basically, you know, tell them sign on the dotted line, you’re gonna get these loans and it’s gonna pay for school,” said Welch. “They come out, there’s no real exit program. No one’s counseled about repayment.”<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a free service that is already helping people from all walks of life.<\/p>\n
“People have this huge bill, like comes up to $500 a month,” Welch said. “You’re working for $17 An hour, you’re paying rent. You’re trying to pay all the rest of your bills. How are you going to pay a $ 500-a-month student loan though? So we teach them that there’s ways to set up your repayment to lower those amounts to make it affordable. Maybe it’ll take you a little bit longer, but there’ll be savings and, at the end, there could very well be loan forgiveness.”<\/p>\n
One of the clients working toward repayment and financial freedom is Sarah Hill, herself.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely not a lot of common knowledge that kind of circulates around the office here,” Hill said. “So I would say I’ve learned a lot that I definitely would not have had access to otherwise.<\/p>\n
These are her coworkers though. It’s easy to talk to them. Others might be more hesitant.<\/p>\n
“Financial issues are always kind of, not necessarily hot water, but a weird issue that people don’t like necessarily talking about,” Hill said. “But I don’t think that should be something that restricts people from wanting to seek help or guidance.”<\/p>\n
For Hill, talking about finances and college debt isn\u2019t terrible.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s embarrassing that student loans have gotten so high and it’s not like there’s no stress of adding increased debt from legal advice because we do offer free services.”<\/p>\n
The biggest thing, whether people are waiting on the student loan forgiveness SCOTUS ruling or just trying to better their financial situation, is to reach out to these programs.<\/p>\n
“It’s really a good place to start,” said Hill.<\/p>\n
Neighborhood Legal Services<\/a> has offices in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Batavia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2014 Federal student loan debt has accumulated to more than $1.6 trillion. That accounts for almost 93% of student loan debt spread out across almost 43 million borrowers. With the average debt sitting at just under $38,000, there are a lot of people who could use help. There are a growing number of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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