Street Roots • June 8-14, 2018
News
Page 11
EVICTIONS, fro m page 10
legislation can do only so much when the
people they’re meant to protect lack access
to legal counsel and affordable housing
options that won’t end with another notice
on the door.
Evictions
nationwide
Percentage of eviction rate in states w here data is available, 2016
Wash: .82%
Mont: .86%
Eviction is a race problem
Anyone can get evicted, but data suggests
that black and brown communities get hit
much harder than white ones.
In the 10 major cities with the highest
eviction rates, according to Eviction Lab
data, five had larger populations of black
residents than White ones. In one of those
cities - Warren, Mississippi - the
percentage of black residents (48.3 percent)
was just 0.8 percent lower than white
residents (49.1 percent). This in a country
in which black people make up 12.6 percent
of the entire population.
In only one of these cities - Chesapeake,
Virginia — did black residents make up less
than 40 percent of the population.
In a study published in 2016 in the
Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law
Review examining the connection between
racial discrimination and evictions,
Desmond and fellow researchers Deena
Greenberg and Carl Gershenson reported
that previous studies of U.S. cities found
that 80 percent of people facing eviction
were people of color. In a Philadelphia
study, 70 percent of people facing eviction
were found to be women of color.
In a previous paper, Desmond wrote, “If
incarceration has become typical in the lives
of men from impoverished black
neighborhoods, eviction has become typical
in the lives of women from these
neighborhoods.”
The 2016 paper didn’t find a robust
connection between racial discrimination
and eviction of black households in
Milwaukee, the city at the heart of the
research. This is likely because people just
didn’t rent to black households in the first
place.
This vicious reality rang true to Michael
Lucas, deputy director of the Atlanta
Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, the largest
provider of free legal services in the greater
Atlanta area.
“Our client base is overwhelmingly black
and it is overwhelmingly black female heads
of households who are dealing with these
issues,” Lucas said. “Eighty percent of our
client base are black families facing
eviction.”
Atlanta has an eviction rate of 5.12
percent — or 16.94 evictions per day. In
Fulton County, where Atlanta sits, the rate
is double, with 39,032 evictions filed in
2016.
Representation matters
It’s true that Georgia and other states in
the South lack significant renter protections,
Lucas said. Being a day late or a dollar short
on rent could land you an eviction filing,
which, by itself, is damaging to an individual
or family’s rental history.
But while he would like to see more
renter-friendly laws, that’s not the first
problem that Lucas would solve.
“I would put in place greater access to
legal representation,” Lucas said. “With
legal representation, even in a landlord-
friendly state like Georgia, a good attorney
Minn: .59%,
N R 1.7%
Mass: 1.52%
W ise 11
Idaho; .61%
3.07%
Conn: 3.04%
Iowa: 201%
Neb 217%
Nev:3.41%
NJ: .01%
1111.58%
Utah: .93%
MD:3.56%
DC: 259%
Del: 5.1%
Ohio: 3.49%l
NC:4.61%
N.M.:3.18%
SC: 8.87%
Geo: 4.71%
>
\
Fla: 253%
Source: Princeton University Eviction Lab
can turn the tide for a tenant.”
And that’s a rare thing for a low-income
tenant to get.
Of the 39,032 filings in Fulton County,
the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation
took on maybe 100, Lucas said.
In South Carolina, where Protheroe
operates, South Carolina Legal Services
closed 458 eviction cases in 2016 out of the
86,682 filed in 2016. That number includes
cases that attorneys shepherded through
court, but also situations in which they gave
a client some advice.
In Seattle, people facing eviction can get
advice from the Housing Justice Project, an
effort by the King County Bar Association,
but only the Legal Action Center follows a
case from start to finish in court, says Mark
Chattin, the center’s directing attorney.
Renters in Portland Seattle have stronger
protections against evictions than the
people that Lucas and Protheroe represent,
but that doesn’t guarantee them safety.
Without access to an attorney, those laws
don’t mean much.
The Seattle Department of Construction
and Inspections enforces the Just Cause
Ordinance, which restricts the reasons for
which a landlord can evict a tenant. They
received 1,684 calls, emails, contacts and
referrals in 2017 related to the Just Cause
Ordinance. Many of those referrals were
from the Legal Action Center and Housing
Justice Project — organizations with limited
resources.
If you or your family is really hard-up,
however, the chances of getting an attorney
go down fast.
The Legal Action Center accepts money
from the city, which completed a
competitive bidding process in November
2017 for services offered in 2018. That
bidding process resulted in a contract that
stipulated that the center should have a 95
percent success rate, defined as clients
being in housing six months after receiving
services, Chattin said.
“We are based on results, so we have to
screen very, very carefully to make sure the
clients we’re taking we can help,” Chattin
said. “On the other side, we’re the only ones
that do this.”
The Housing Justice Project doesn’t have
this restriction, which means their attorneys
see the bulk of the evictions that take place
in King County, says Edmund Witter, the
Housing Justice Project manager. His
organization handles 90 percent of the
county’s evictions, he said.
Witter and his team intervene in evictions
that aren’t slam-dunk cases. That gives them
a deep insight into the flaws in the system
that allow a woman to be evicted over a $4
shortfall in rent, or a cancer patient find
themselves unable to find a new place to
stay after an eviction ruined her rental
history.
“A lot of judges see it as a contract law
question,” Witter says. “Historically
speaking, it’s an equity question — yes, this
person didn’t pay $4, but should they lose
their home?”
Even if a household facing eviction could
find a way to raise the money in the hopes
of hiring a private attorney, the chances of
them finding one is still very low.
People facing eviction are mainly low-
income, and attorney fees, a potential
incentive, aren’t available in a landlord-
* tenant case, said John Pollock, coordinator
for the National Coalition for a Civil Right to
Counsel.
But Pollock and his organization firmly
believe that anyone who walks into a
courtroom deserves a right to counsel. The
scales of justice tip inexorably toward a
landlord who shows up with counsel to fight
with a tenant who doesn’t.
“That’s not their fault,” Pollock said.
“Legal proceedings are complex, and
evictions are no exception to that rule.
There are many defenses they could have to
eviction that they do not realize.”
Unlike criminal court, where a defendant
must be provided with access to an attorney,
there is no such uniform expectation in civil
court. Some governments provide limited
access; for example, Seattle recently moved
to guarantee that undocumented people
facing legal proceedings would have access
to representation.
The biggest player to ensure right to
counsel in eviction proceedings is
indisputably New York City. The City
Council passed an act in 2017 guaranteeing
that everyone making under 200 percent of
the federal poverty level will receive counsel
in eviction proceedings. It will take five
years to fully implement the program, and
the city has committed $155 million to do it.
Additional cities including San Francisco,
Boston and Washington, D.C., are looking at
potential new laws to expand access in
eviction suits as well.
It just makes sense, Pollock said.
“When it comes to counsel, it’s all about
prevention,” Pollock said. “You keep much
more serious problems from happening.”
This “stitch in time” philosophy means
stepping in before a family becomes
homeless, before parents lose their
children, before a worker loses their job,
before a child loses months of educational
attainment. Getting in before these dire
consequences surface prevents human
suffering, but it’s also coldly pragmatic.
If people do not become homeless,
there’s less money spent on homeless
services. If parents keep their children,
that’s less money spent on the foster care
system. If children avoid early traumas and
stay in school, they’re more likely to have
better outcomes later in life, sparing costs
on the criminal justice and mental health
systems.
“Counsel is not free, but if you can divert
people away from homeless shelters, if you
can keep them housed, it’s a huge cost
savings,” Pollock said. “A lawyer doesn’t
cost anywhere near th a t”
Courtesy of Real Change / INSPngo