"Our mission is the elimination of unlawful housing discrimination and promotion of decent and affordable housing through advocacy and education."
"Nuestra mision es la eliminacion de la discriminacion ilegal en la vivienda y la promocion de la casa economica por el apoyo y la educacion."
Description
Long Island Housing Services - in brief! Elimination of unlawful housing discrimination ranks as the agency's priority. However, in addition to Fair Housing counseling and investigations, seeking redress for victims where compelling evidence is gathered, we also serve in many other capacities to improve housing conditions for residents. Routinely, clients are referred to us by word-of-mouth and a wide variety of private and public agencies to assist in counseling to resolve many landlord-tenant disputes related to: relationships/communication with housing providers; illegal eviction actions (such as denial of essential services like heat, water, electricity); securing or maintaining housing; improving conditions of habitability (e.g. sanitation/plumbing, infestation, fallen ceilings, leaking roofs/windows); denial of reasonable accommodation (e.g. for creating ramp or parking accessible for tenant's use); setting illegal occupancy rules, etcetera. Examples of local government agencies from which clients are commonly referred are: County Courts and Departments of Health, Handicapped, Senior and Social Services, Police, as well as Town Building and Code Enforcement Departments. LIHS also counsels homeowners that are in danger of foreclosure because of changed economic circumstances (e.g. loss of or diminished income related to hospitalization, illness, job loss, death or separation of families). Besides our unique fair housing services, LIHS is also distinguished from any other HUD-approved, certified Housing Counseling agency that serves Long Island. For the second year in a row, our Housing Counseling Program Coordinator is the only one to have passed HUD-AARP's rigorous examination, a prerequisite for counseling for seniors 62 and over that wish to explore the option of a reverse mortgage. Home Equity Conversion Mortgage ("HECM") loans require this specialized and highly sensitive counseling to safeguard from abusive lending practices that can actually cause all of one's equity to be stripped into homelessness.
