Legal Services for the Underserved
Starting as a child, passing down her outgrown clothes led to a lifelong passion to help others by providing legal assistance to deal with life-impacting issues involving housing and civil rights.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Anita Santos-Singh (AS) was born in Brownsville, Texas, a town in Texas very close to its border with Mexico. Her family traced its ancestry to Mexico but had settled in the U.S. for better economic opportunities. From her parents, a manual laborer, and an office worker, AS learned the value of hard work to be able to provide food, clothing and a place to live for the family.
CHILDHOOD
As a child, AS often observed her parents and others within their Mexican-American community help each other. Sometimes those efforts required hands-on assistance from children such as AS, to bring groceries to sick neighbors, pass along outgrown clothing and offer dry shelter to friends experiencing homelessness.
EDUCATION
AS always worked hard as a student from elementary through high school, attracting the attention of a college recruiter visiting her high school from the University of Pennsylvania (one of the ‘Ivy League’ schools), obviously many thousands of miles from Texas.
While a dedicated student, AS was never shy. Among her many activities was serving as the school’s Viking mascot.
The recruiter was hoping to bring good students with minority backgrounds to diversify the student body at Penn. AS had a personal goal: to see the larger world, starting by attending an Ivy League school. So, she accepted Penn’s scholarship offer, and left her family and her small town to learn more about life in a big, East Coast city.
A sister of AS recalled AS telling her: “I want to go there!” And once AS got there, she loved Philadelphia.
A fellow student with a shared Hispanic ethnicity (Pedro Ramos, who eventually served as the City of Philadelphia’s top government lawyer – “City Solicitor” – also President of the city’s Board of Education and U. of Penn V.P. where his portfolio included coordination of Penn’s neighborhood initiatives and strategy) recalled meeting AS during his first week at the university, as part of a Latino student group welcoming the freshmen class. AS was then a sophomore, a year ahead. Penn was a ‘big place’ which could cause anxiety to new students. Ramos recalled AS being so welcoming and helpful. “What was she doing there?” he recalled wondering later. “She was probably 19 years old at that time but already comfortable in service, doing something for somebody else.”
INTERNSHIP LED TO CAREER CHOICE
During her years as a Penn student, AS interned at Community Legal Services (CLS) which ignited her passion for civil legal aid work advising and representing clients who could not afford to hire private attorneys.
After graduating from Penn with a degree in international relations, AS attended the University of Michigan Law School (highly rated among the top U.S. law schools) but upon earning her law degree, she returned to CLS in Philadelphia to focus on representing clients in matters involving their housing within the Homeownership and Consumer Rights Unit of CLS, where during the next seven years, AS “saved countless people from losing their homes.”
Friends marveled at AS’ dedication to her clients. When one friend heard from AS about her workload during those earlier years, the friend was moved to ask, “When did you sleep? When did you eat?”
CHALLENGE – MAJOR FUNDING SOURCES ALWAYS UNSTABLE
In 1996, CLS faced a financial crisis. Conservatives had been elected to majority control in the U.S. Congress during the midterm elections and targeted the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) for elimination under their campaign platform (“Contract with America.”) LSC, a federal agency, is the largest funder of civil legal aid and CLS’s primary funding source.
Ultimately, LSC’s funding was cut by one-third and onerous restrictions on the independent, non-profit organizations that receive LSC funding were imposed. CLS in Philadelphia responded – creatively – by establishing a second legal services organization, “Philadelphia Legal Assistance” (PLA) that could bid on federal grants money and accept the federal government’s restrictions while CLS retained all non-federal funding and performed unrestricted work.
(Editor’s note – One example of free legal assistance to people who couldn’t afford to hire private counsel, for which the conservative politicians in 1996 were objecting was providing attorneys to represent tenants to challenge evictions from their apartments, especially after the tenants had complained to their landlords about problems negatively affecting their apartments, such as plumbing and roof leaks, inadequate heating or cooling, rats, etc. Those conservatives were more sympathetic to the property owners’ desire to maintain their business profits.)
CAREER DEDICATION LED TO PROMOTION AND DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES
After demonstrating her dedication to serving the public who could not afford private legal counsel for advocacy involving housing and civil rights issues, AS, at age 32, was hired as PLA’s first Executive Director, growing it into an organization that as of 2023, serves more than 6,000 clients and their families annually.
AS explained what she learned by representing her clients: “For poor people, a single civil legal problem could quickly morph into a catastrophe impacting so much of their lives.” Helping clients who would otherwise face their complex civil issues without a lawyer became her life’s mission.
For more than 25 years, AS was credited by PLA leadership for being “on the front lines of confronting oppressive race and income disparities, protecting individuals and families, and striving for the greatest community impact as possible.”
One of AS’ efforts was to build a highly successful medical-legal community partnership. To provide point of contact service, PLA lawyers were embedded in public health centers so that Philadelphians could obtain legal help in their communities where they receive medical care.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Those who knew AS best recalled that “instead of being an aloof administrator, she would walk around the office and talk to you. She wasn’t a lofty decision maker. She was in it every day.”
AS would also be remembered for her big laugh, sense of humor and her empathy., “She could say the right thing with a warm smile and a few words and tell you everything you needed to know,” said her long-time friend, Pedro Ramos.
During her long (but too short) career, AS received many awards, including the Hispanic Bar Association of Pennsylvania’s La Justicia Award and the Orgullo Award from the Latino Law Students Association at the University of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Bar Association (lawyers – not bartenders) awarded AS the Andrew Hamilton Award (now known as Bending the Arc Award), which “recognizes legal professionals for their achievement, resilience and courage in work and life.”
_________________________________________________________________________
This career story is based on an obituary written by Lynette Hazelton, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper on January 18, 2024.
