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More low-income tenants facing eviction in the District will soon arrive in court with something that has been shown to keep families in their homes and, in some cases, ensure they don’t lose access to government housing assistance: a lawyer.
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Beginning this month, a coalition of six nonprofits, 19 private law firms and the D.C. Access to Justice Commission will relaunch an initiative that, officials said, will guarantee more D.C. tenants who receive some kind of government housing subsidy access to a lawyer to represent them for free throughout eviction proceedings.
Even as the number of successful evictions in the city increased 250 percent between January 2022 and January 2023, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, the number of renters who show up to court with legal representation remains low.
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For residents who receive government housing assistance, having an eviction filed against them “can be devastating, if it results in an eviction and they’re not able to assert their rights,” said Vikram Swaruup, executive director of Legal Aid D.C., which spearheaded Thursday’s relaunch of the Housing Right to Counsel Project. "Not only could they lose their housing, they could also lose the subsidy.”
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In the District, where rents have climbed year over year and housing vouchers remain hard to get and slow to reach people, being evicted can mean being pushed out of D.C. or being forced into homelessness. And the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city is up, according to the point-in-time count, which found a 12 percent increase in 2023 from the year before.
“The moment is critical for a housing right to counsel to make sure people do have the ability to assert their rights — and we know that providing a lawyer to people works,” Swaruup said.
The effort comes during a national groundswell of support for guaranteeing lawyers for people facing an eviction filing, as eviction rates in some cities have hit levels more than 50 percent higher than before the pandemic, according to the Eviction Lab.
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As eviction cases proceed, disparities in resources, access to legal advice and support are put on stark display in America’s courtrooms. According to data collected by the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, landlords show up to eviction proceedings with a lawyer about 80 percent of the time. About 4 percent of tenants enter courtrooms with similar support.
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“In 2020, people really started to connect the dots between the criminal justice system and the civil justice system, and looking at evictions, which have always predominantly affected people of color, it’s clear that this is not equitable,” said John Pollack, coordinator of the Coalition. “The people who suffer the most from not having a right to counsel in these cases are Black women — that’s who’s suffering.”
Before the covid-19 pandemic shuttered landlord-tenant courts and paused evictions around the country, only five jurisdictions had codified in law a guaranteed right to counsel for renters: New York City, which in 2017 became the first in the country to do so; San Francisco; Newark; Philadelphia and Cleveland.
Since 2020, according to the Coalition, 17 more such laws have passed at the city, state and county levels.
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“The jurisdictions that have begun to adopt right-to-counsel laws really show that this is not a narrow interest. This is across the country, across the political spectrum,” Pollack said.
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The District itself has not enacted any law that would guarantee specific tenants access to a lawyer in eviction cases. But the relaunched Housing Right to Counsel Project builds on a 2016 effort in a way that organizers hope might lead to more robust protections and, perhaps, a codified right down the line.
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“Housing and access to housing and housing stability, those are community values,” said Nancy Drane, the executive director of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, the D.C. court system’s equity arm. “I think what’s exciting about this project is it honors that community approach by saying that the government has a role here by providing funding to civil legal services attorneys whose job it is to do this representation, but the private Bar and private sector has a role, too, to utilize their resources to help District residents in need.”
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Every dollar spent on civil legal services has a return on investment of $5 to $9 that otherwise would be needed to address the crises that often follow an eviction — in social services, homelessness prevention and other supports, according to the D.C. Bar Foundation, which reviewed studies from more than half a dozen states that track outcomes.
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There is no centralized mechanism in the District that neatly shows how many eviction cases are levied against renters who receive government subsidies. But according to Legal Aid D.C., which has begun to identify potential clients through the first two weeks of December, about a third of the eviction cases scheduled for an initial hearing involve renters on a subsidy.
Tenants with counsel are much more likely to fight an eviction case and receive much more time to work toward a resolution that may avoid an actual eviction order: an average of 108 days between initial hearing and case disposition, versus an average of about 14 days for tenants without a lawyer. Almost half of unrepresented tenants see their case resolved on their first day in court, officials said.
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Having a lawyer also significantly decreases the rate at which tenants are ultimately evicted.
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From 2016 to 2019, during the District’s pilot program, more than 300 residents were provided a lawyer to see them through eviction cases. Tenants who participated in the program were 16 times more likely to challenge an eviction and eight times less likely to face an eviction judgment, according to Legal Aid D.C.
Just before the pilot launched, Latricia Jones was hit with an eviction filing, after more than 10 years of living in the same subsidized apartment. Jones had paid her rent, but the money was not properly accounted for by her landlord.
After the pilot program connected her with two lawyers to aid in her defense, the legal team found and produced documents that proved the error. Soon, Jones’s landlord didn’t just agree to dismiss the case — the landlord also forgave past debts and made long-overdue repairs in Jones’s unit.
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“I think about [my lawyers] all the time all these years later,” Jones said in a statement provided to The Post by Legal Aid D.C. “That case was my first time in landlord tenant court. Without them, I would not have known what legal steps to take by myself. It wasn’t just me who would have been harmed if things didn’t go well in that case. I have a family. My lawyers fought for me every step of the way.”
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D.C.'s eviction-prevention hotline, which was established in 2020 to offer remote help to low-income D.C. renters, has received thousands of calls since from tenants asking for legal advice. Those calls for help, Swaruup said, have risen 50 percent this year compared to last. Officials tout the reinvigorated partnership with law firms as a cost-efficient way to expand eviction aid — with the hope that more firms and lawyers can be added in coming years.
Lawyers participating in the program will be pulled from legal services nonprofits, many of which already provide legal counsel to D.C. renters, as well as the 19 law firms, which have pledged to take on specific numbers of additional cases. The D.C. Office of the Attorney General and federal government have also pledged support.
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The District’s program, officials said, would be the only housing right to counsel program in the country that is primarily based on pro bono support for law firms.
“We are an unusual city in that we have a lot of law firms, and that creates a real opportunity for us,” Swaruup said.
Lawyers will begin to take on cases set for initial appearances the week of Nov. 27. Eligible tenants will receive a notice in the mail.
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