By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

While giving equal access for justice, Prairie State Legal Services lends a hand for several civil matters, including substandard housing issues.

Managing Attorney Adrian Barr explains that these include serious issues in your home that haven’t been resolved by simply contacting your landlord. He explains the steps in which those problems can potentially be solved.

“The first step would be reporting that to the village or city. If you live in rural Livingston County, you probably don’t have that option. Sometimes the city official can fix the issue, but sometimes the landlords are just so resistant that they don’t care and they don’t comply with what the city is telling them to do. So, at that point or at any point, you can contact an attorney (and Prairie State Legal Services is given grant money to help with this kind of situation). We can then contact the landlord on that person’s behalf and ask for the repairs and if they’re not done, we can sue the landlord to force them to fix the issues,” Barr said.

For more information, call 309-827-5021.