Intro to tenant right to counsel


CURRENT TALLY: 15 cities, 4 states, 1 county!


"The effort to mandate a renter’s access to legal representation when facing housing displacement appears to be losing no steam in 2022." - National Apartment Association


"It’s more collaborative now than adversarial, and it’s really been much better for the system ..." - A landlord attorney talking to the Spokane Journal of Business about the atmosphere in the wake of Washington State's tenant right to counsel

 

Check out our 3-minute video celebrating the victories and leaders of the tenant right to counsel movement!


NEW RESOURCe on BALLOT INITIATIVES!

 

Housing Justice on the Ballot: A Ballot Initiative Guide

 

Ballot Initiative Guide

Last Fall, PolicyLink launched the Housing Justice on the Ballot webinar series. In continuation of that critical work, PolicyLink and the NCCRC co-authored a guide for tenant organizers, housing advocates, legal advocates, and anyone interested in bringing housing justice to life by advancing renter protections on the ballot.


Whether groups are in the beginning stages of exploring a ballot initiative campaign for their jurisdiction and want to prepare themselves for the journey, or they are inviting partner organizations to join an existing campaign and want them to know what to expect for the path ahead — this guide is meant to support campaigns from policy idea to implementation. Most importantly, this guide is filled with advice and tips from campaign leaders nationwide who have successfully led ballot initiative campaigns for housing justice or are currently running one. Their stories are captured in case studies spread throughout the guide, and their wisdom — the foundation on which this guide is based — is an invaluable resource for housing justice campaigns to come. Check out the webinar on the Ballot Initiative Guide!


Download the Guide.


learning from the victories

                    

Prior to 2017, no jurisdiction in the country provided a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction. But as we closed out 2021, there were 3 states and 13 cities with such a right, a testament to the incredible work of tenant organizers, legal services programs, community-based organizations, and others. And the movement is only picking up steam. 2022 promises to be another huge year, with activity in regions all over the country. But before that work begins, we invited speakers from across the country to help all of us recognize the immense progress and dramatic victories that have already propelled the movement forward.  Check out this video!

 

     

 

Also, check out Lessons from Four Cities Fighting to Stop Evictions with Right to Counsel. This outlines lessons on a variety of topics: organizing, campaign beginnings and strategies, changing the landlord-tenant power imbalance, and much more (including a thorough resource list).  These lessons emerged during a webinar series co-hosted by RTCNYC and NCCRC.

                

key eviction right to counsel resources  

 

  • Laws:
 
 
    • Enacted law trackers: 
 
 
 
      •  LSC's eviction laws database only tracks state-level right to counsel laws, and only those in effect as of Jan 1, 2021; the laws in Washington State, Connecticut, and Maryland passed after that date.
 
 
 
    • Pending legislation: we've got this cataloged on our legislative tracking page (NOTE: this page includes all civil right to counsel legislation, not just bills related to evictions).

  • Data:
 
    • Representation statistics (landlords and tenants): For many years, it was regularly reported that tenants were represented 10% of the time, compared to 90% of landlords.  However, our most recent data from several dozen jurisdictions actually puts the tenant representation figure at a mere 3% and the landlord figure at 81%.
 
    • Cost/benefit reports:
 
      • Stout, a financial analysis company, has done a number of studies estimating the costs and benefits of providing a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.  Every report has found that cities and states will save far more than they spend to provide such a right, due to avoided costs around shelters, health care, foster care, and other social safety net services.
 
 
    • Race equity data:
 
 
  
 
    • RTC program impact highlights:
 
      • NYC: 
        • 84% of represented tenants were able to remain in their homes. 
        • "100 percent of tenants with calendared eviction cases had access to legal services, and 71 percent of tenants who appeared in Housing Court had full representation by attorneys – nearly double the pre-pandemic rate of 38 percent, and an exponential increase over the 1 percent of tenants who had lawyers in 2013."
        • Eviction filing rate dropped 30% after funding began for expanded representation in 2014.
      • San Francisco: 
        • 59% of fully represented tenants have been able to remain in their homes.
        • Of the 30% who did not remain in their unit, 70% received a favorable settlement, such as a move-out with sufficient time and money (i.e., a combination of rent waiver and cash payment to move out).
        • Filing rate dropped 10% in first year.
      • Cleveland: 
        • 93% of clients avoided an eviction judgment or an involuntary move.
        • 83% of clients who desired rental assistance were able to obtain it, and of the 21% of clients who were unaware of rental assistance at the time they contacted Legal Aid, approximately 98% wanted rental assistance and Legal Aid helped 81% of those clients obtain it. 
        • 92% of clients who wanted additional time to move, and 97% who sought monetary relief, were able to get it.
      • Boulder: 63% of represented cases avoided eviction, which was a 26% increase.  In essence, all tenants who appeared in court and were provided an attorney avoided eviction; only the no-show tenants were given an eviction order.  
      • Kansas City: In Jackson County, the pre-RTC eviction rate was 99% and in the first 3 months of RTC it was less than 20%.  Most recently, according to KCUR, "Right to counsel attorneys have taken 1,200 eviction cases and 771 of them have been resolved. Of those resolved cases, 91.5% of tenants have avoided eviction – almost a complete reversal from the 99% of tenants who were evicted before the program."
      • Toledo: ""Of the 139 cases closed so far, nearly 88 percent, or 122, of those cases were successful in avoiding eviction. As a result, 177 adults and 190 children were able to stay in their homes."
      • Connecticut:
        • Of the 82% of clients that wanted to prevent an involuntary move, 71% achieved that goal;
        • Of the 80% that sought to avoid an eviction on their record, 76% achieved that goal.
        • The estimated cost savings to the state were $5.8 - $6.3 million.
      • Washington State: "Tenants remained in their homes in more than 50% of closed cases where the result is known."
 
    • Non-RTC tenant representation project impact highlights:
 
      • A research brief from Open Justice Oklahoma found tenant legal representation increased the odds of unit retention by 75%.
      • In Massachusetts, a statewide COVID eviction legal help project providing full representation to low-income tenants resulted in 90% of cases closing in positive outcomes, with 70% of tenants remaining in their homes and 20% of tenants having more time to find a place to live.
      • A California study found that fully represented tenants stayed in their units three times as often as those receiving limited or no legal assistance.  When tenants did have to move, fully represented tenants were given twice as long to do so.
      • A study out of Hennepin County found that represented tenants were twice as likely to stay in their homes, received twice as long to move if
 necessary, and were four times less likely to use a homeless shelter than those without counsel.  78% of represented tenants left with a clean eviction record, compared to 6% of unrepresented tenants.
      • A Denver study found that represented tenants remained in their homes 70-100% of the time, compared to 32% of unrepresented tenants. For
 unrepresented tenants, the dispossession rate was 43% (Denver Housing Authority cases) and 68% (private housing cases).
      • Overall, Stout LLC,a financial analysis company that has produced extensive right to counsel reports for numerous cities, has consistently found that a right to counsel leads to more than 90% of tenants avoiding disruptive displacement.
      • A Baltimore survey of rent court respondents found that despite 80% of tenants having a potential defense, only 8% without representation successfully asserted it.
      • A Philadelphia report found that “6.8 percent of survey respondents reported experiencing at least one form of illegal eviction (being locked out, paid to move, threatened with eviction, or otherwise illegally forced to move by their landlord) between February 2019 and February 2020."  It also found that "Tenants chose not to pay rent because their landlord would not make repairs (19 percent) almost as often as they could not pay rent because of changes in their finances (20 percent). Many also reported not paying rent because a landlord threatened or harassed them (18 percent)."
 
    • Other impact studies: Our comprehensive bibliography tracks the studies that have analyzed the impact of providing counsel for tenants in eviction cases.
 
    • Census data on evictions: we worked with Stout LLC to put together an interactive tool analyzing census data for all 50 states as to who's facing eviction, broken down by demographics (NOTE: updates ceased at end of 5/22).
 
  • Federal funding: We have an entire page set up about eviction right to counsel federal funding.  It includes a table explaining how all the funding sources work, a webinar featuring jurisdictions discussing how they accessed the funding, and a comprehensive list of jurisdictions that have made federal funding commitments to eviction right to counsel or tenant representation expansion. The Treasury Department (alongside HUD and the Attorney General's Office) has urged jurisdictions to use this funding to support a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.  It is also worth noting that Congress appropriated some funding to HUD for tenant representation. 
 
  • Implementation resources:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  • Press highlights:
 
 
 
    • Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Evictions
 
 
 
 
 
  • Other advocacy resources:
 
    • State/local right to counsel websites:
 
 
    • CityHealth:

 

      • In conjunction with CityHealth and Enterprise Community Partners, we released a report, Addressing America's Housing Crisis, that addresses three policies that can address the country's housing crisis while furthering health and race equity.  One of the policies is a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.  We recently had a webinar on the report: check out the recording and slide deck!
 
      • We worked with CityHealth to rate 75 cities on their eviction right to counsel polciies.  Check out our CityHealth page to learn more!
 
    • Public opinion research: Data for Progress and The Appeal has conducted polling showing that support for a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction has grown to the point that “81 percent of voters—including 87 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents, and 70 percent of Republicans—support[ing] a right to counsel for evictions proceedings.”
 
    • Talking points: The NCCRC has developed a set of  right to counsel talking points that can be used with policymakers, funders, and others.  Addditionally, a CityHealth blog post by the NCCRC and Professor Kathryn Leifheit, PhD MSPH, highlights the primary effects of eviction on health.

Tenant right to counsel Organizing resources

 

Historically, the movement for a right to counsel in civil cases has been driven by the legal community: legal services organizations, private bar associations, law firms, pro bono organizations, nonprofits, access to justice commissions, legal academics, and so on.  However, efforts to establish a right to counsel in eviction cases have been achieved in places like New York City, San Francisco, and Newark largely through the efforts of community-based tenant organizing group.  When the right to counsel campaigns are centered upon such groups, achievement of the right to counsel can not only increase fairness in the judicial system, but also help transform the general power dynamic between tenants and landlords. 

 

In November 2019, the NCCRC co-hosted a 90-minute webinar with the Right to Counsel Coalition of NYC (RTCNYC) to explore how attorneys can work with tenant organizers in order to pursue a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.  Here are the materials from that webinar:

 

 

Additionally, RTCNYC has developed:

 

  • An organizing toolkit for jurisdictions looking to initiate a campaign around an eviction right to counsel;
  • A campaign map displaying where campaigns are active;
  • A convening of organizers that led to a list of shared principles for legislation.
  • A documentary on how RTCNYC achieved the right to counsel in NYC.
  •  A report on how the eviction right to counsel has strengthened the tenant movement in NYC.
 

Eviction right to counsel supporters

 

  • Courts:
 
    • California Supreme Court Work Group on Homelessness - report supporting RTC
 
 
  • National advocacy groups:
 
 
 




    • Data for Progress:
 
 

 

 
    • The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC):
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
    • PolicyLink:
 
 
 
 
  • Federal government: 

 

 

  • The Federal Reserve:





  • Real estate industry:

    • Massachusetts real estate companies: 2021 letter supporting passage of RTC and 2023 letter urging inclusion of $7 million in state budget for RTC.
 
    • Multifamily NW: "If a renter needs assistance to help understand their rights, they should have access to qualified representation", in Portland Mercury