New national reports call for right to counsel in housing cases
A report from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Protect Tenants, Prevent Homelessness, “details the relationships between renters’ rights, evictions, and homelessness, highlighting issues low-income renters face and providing recommendations for improving housing security among vulnerable populations.” It contains a section on right to counsel authored by NCCRC Coordinator John Pollock that is part of the report’s analysis of how to stabilize housing by preventing unnecessary evictions.
Additionally, the Center for Social Innovation’s new report, Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities, has some startling statistics on how people of color represent a disproportionate percentage of the homeless population, even when accounting for income. One of their solutions? “All individuals facing eviction in housing court should have appropriate representation.”
The NCCRC wrote the right to counsel section for the NLCHP report.
