Scarborough Community Legal Services

About Scarborough Community Legal Services

Scarborough Community Legal Services (SCLS) is a community legal clinic that has served East Scarborough since 1981, when it was founded to provide poverty law services, the areas of law that matter most to low income people. Legal Aid Ontario funds the clinic, and SCLS operates as an independent nonprofit corporation with its own volunteer board of directors, elected by the community it serves. Its territory runs from Midland Avenue east to the Pickering border and from Steeles Avenue south to Lake Ontario. A companion clinic, West Scarborough Community Legal Services, covers the rest of Scarborough west of Midland Avenue, so together the two clinics cover the whole area.

SCLS helps eligible residents with housing and tenant rights, employment law, social assistance matters such as Ontario Works, ODSP, Employment Insurance and CPP Disability, and immigration and refugee law. Staff includes lawyers, community legal workers, community support workers and intake workers, and clients reach the clinic by phone intake or by walking in during set hours. The clinic also does law reform work beyond individual cases: submissions to bodies reviewing laws and programs, test case challenges, and partnerships with groups such as the ODSP Action Coalition, the Scarborough Housing Stabilization Network and the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations. A 2022 post on the clinic's own site said SCLS was built by labour activists and had, by then, spent 40 years defending the rights of low income workers.