by Jay Speer, VPLC Executive Director I have been thinking a lot about Ward Scull who died recently.  Ward was a long-time ally of VPLC in our multi-year legislative fight with Virginia’s payday lenders.  VPLC advocated for just and fair lending, but the payday lenders wanted to continue making huge sums of money exploiting Virginians […]

We hope you’ll join us online Thursday morning for an update on new laws about to take effect in Virginia. Register here: https://bit.ly/VPLC-2024-Legislation

Tired of candidates discussing issues that are not really important to our day-to-day lives? What could be more important than making sure there is enough housing for everyone across income levels?  Yet the issue of  housing affordability has rarely been a key issue in electoral politics in Virginia and elsewhere in the nation. With the […]

  Tired of candidates discussing issues that are not really important to our day-to-day lives? What could be more important than making sure there is enough housing for everyone across income levels?  Yet the issue of  housing affordability has rarely been a key issue in electoral politics in Virginia and elsewhere in the nation. With […]

This past week was crossover at the Virginia General Assembly meaning that the House of Delegates will now consider Senate bills and the Senate will consider House bills.  VPLC advocates reviewed 2,600 bills introduced in the first two weeks of the session and decided to follow 255 of those bills as they made their way […]

VPLC Supports HB 1851 as Closing a Loophole Available to 1st Offense Domestic Violence Abusers Who Have Benefited from Deferred Sentencing Provisions §18.2-57.3 is the deferred sentencing provision available to first-time domestic violence abusers. It is only available to first-time offenders over 18 years of age who acknowledge that the Commonwealth of Virginia has enough […]

  Preliminary Protective Orders (PPOs) are emergency orders designed to protect the “health and safety of the petitioner or any family or household member of the petitioner” against an act of violence, force or threat that results in bodily injury or places one in reasonable apprehension of death, sexual assault, or bodily injury. In most jurisdictions […]

Recognizing that low-income people cannot access justice if they are required to pay for it, Virginia law provides these people the right to sue and defend suit without paying costs and fees ( Virginia Code §17.1-606). However, the law offers no guidance on how to determine whether a person is sufficiently impoverished to qualify for […]

Hot off the Press and ready to view! We invite you to look at the 2016 VPLC Legislative Agenda to see our legislative priorities for this year’s General Assembly session. Each page has details of issues our staff is advocating, what we hope to accomplish and bring awareness around to legislators, and quotations to inspire you […]

With another General Assembly session behind us, the staff at the Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC) has had some time to reflect on what our advocacy work means and why it matters. Regardless of which political party holds a majority in the state legislature, and in spite of the often negative rhetoric that comes with […]