NCCRC, SAJE, NYLS Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law, and RTCNYC co-host 2025 Tenant RTC Convening
We’re so honored to have brought together 165+ tenant RTC leaders from around the country!
On April 24 and 25, 2025 at New York Law School the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC), a project of the Public Justice Center, Right to Counsel NYC Coalition (RTCNYC), Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), and New York Law School’s Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law co-hosted the 2025 Tenant Right to Counsel Convening.
We built this two-day, in-person event to help advance the strength, breadth, and effectiveness of the tenant right to counsel (TRTC or RTC) movement by anchoring it in a vision of a human right to housing and a transformative approach to eviction defense that:
- keeps people in their homes and preserves communities,
- centers community organizing and community leadership,
- disrupts structural racism and imbalance in the eviction courts, and,
- advances housing rights’ principles of security of tenure, affordability, habitability, and safety and security.
We set out to
- Build stronger relationships within the tenant RTC movement
- Encourage participants to share lessons and strategies
- Foster more cohesion around the meaning of a right to counsel for tenants and related issues
Attendees joined us for six full-group workshops where we explored
- The Past, Present, and Future of Tenant RTC
- Defining Tenant RTC as a Movement and Setting Common Parameters
- Tenant Leadership in RTC Work
- Race Equity in Tenant RTC Advocacy
- We Demand More: Using Tenant RTC as a Tool to Advance Broader Housing Justice (Keynote Address)
- Sustaining the National Movement: How Do We Move Tenant RTC Forward Together?
And participated in a choice of 12 smaller strategy-building sessions
- Bringing it Home: Strategies for Early Campaign Building and Achieving Key Stakeholder Sign-On
- How to Activate All Tenants: Learnings about Tenant Outreach and its Impact on Tenant RTC
- Narrative Strategy: How to Politicize Evictions and Communicate the Power of RTC
- By Tenants For Tenants: Building Up The Organizing Infrastructure To Pass & Implement Tenant RTC
- A Self-Directed Workshop
- Planning the Attorney Pipeline: Advocate Recruitment and Retention
- Developing Relationships, Alignment, and Accountability with Elected Officials
- Research and Data: Key Tools for Tenant RTC
- RTC for Culture Change: What High-Quality Representation Looks Like
- Starting a Tenant RTC Campaign 101 + Evolution
- Ins And Outs of Movement Lawyers And Working With/For The Community You’re Serving
- The Money Side of Tenant RTC: Costs and Funding
“..right to counsel is a rule of law movement…we are seeing an assault on the rule of law. The right to counsel is a human rights movement. We are seeing incredible assault on human rights. Right to counsel is a civil rights movement. We’re seeing assaults on every aspect of civil rights right now, and we need to fight back…And I think one of the ways is to sustain this movement…It saves money, it prevents homelessness. But it’s about fundamental fairness. It’s about human rights. It’s about due process. It’s about what kind of a world do we want to live in…it’s wonderful to be in a room with people who are working towards justice and human rights, and we got to sustain it. We got to sustain it. This is not a moment to shy away…This is a moment to fight back.“
– Professor Andrew Scherer, New York Law School, Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law
What’s next?
Collected learnings – coming soon!
The convening sparked powerful conversations about the progress of the tenant right to counsel movement, what the work looks like in the current political environments, what’s missing, and what’s possible. We’re gathering those collective insights, key takeaways, lessons, and strategies to share with participants and ensure the momentum continues!
Available Resources
The 2025 Tenant RTC Convening | Annotated Bibliography was created by the students and research assistants in the New York Law School Housing Rights Clinic (2024-2025). Many thanks for their work!
A Right to Counsel For Tenants Facing Eviction: A Comprehensive Guide, from the NCCRC, is a living record of the tenant RTC movement based on our work and interviews with RTC advocates, policymakers, and organizers across the country.
“But let me say, there is no power like the power of the people and the power of the people cannot be stopped.”
– Fitzroy Christian, Tenant Leadership in Right to Counsel Work
Thank you!
- To the 165+ tenant leaders, organizers, professors, researchers, lawyers, and TRTC advocates and supporters who traveled in from around the country to join us at the Convening.
- To our incredible speakers for taking the time and energy to present and to guide conversations.
- To the Public Justice Center, of which the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel is a project, for its incredible support.
- To our incredible advisory group members, who dedicated their time and energy to help us build this event: Malika Conner (RTC New York City Coalition), Andrew Scherer (NYLS Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law), Pablo Estupiñan (Strategic Actions for a Just Economy), and Andrew Ashbrook, Shuron Jones, John Pollock, and Maria Roumiantseva (National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel).
The 2025 Tenant RTC Convening was made possible with support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Thank you to New York Law School for hosting us, Rolland Smith for his excellent photography, and LUCEProductions for expertly coordinating this event.
