Eviction notice
Robin Sereno has seen the difference that an attorney can make in the life of someone facing eviction.
The executive director of the Tenant Resource Center says that about 90 percent of the landlords seeking to evict people have legal representation, whereas only about 3 percent of tenants do.
“Sometimes, landlords walk into court and know there’s a power imbalance,” Sereno says. “But once they see an attorney, they say, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can get this settled.’”
Advocates for tenants are hoping that they can shift the power balance between renters and landlords by providing free legal counsel to people facing eviction. The Tenant Resource Center — using funding from both the city of Madison and Dane County — is working to connect tenants facing eviction with legal representation from one of three places: Community Justice Inc., Legal Action of Wisconsin, and the newly formed Eviction Defense Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
It’s part of a growing national movement to provide free counsel to people facing eviction, similar to how anyone facing a criminal charge has a right to an attorney. Although the Madison initiative is small and not everyone facing eviction is getting free legal representation, some advocates hope it could grow.
“We’re talking about housing, a fundamental basic right,” says Supv. Carousel Bayrd, who is also an attorney at Community Justice, where she specializes in tenant rights and housing discrimination. “It’s not like the relationship between a company and a customer. We should be trying to preserve housing whenever possible. Housing deserves a higher level of review than a simple sales contract.”
John Pollock, an attorney with the Public Justice Center and the coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, has been advocating for representation for people facing eviction.
In the past five years, Pollock says that three states — Washington, Maryland and Connecticut — have passed laws giving tenants a right to counsel in eviction proceedings. Thirteen cities, including New York, San Francisco and Kansas City, have passed similar legislation.
For renters, a lot is at stake and they have much to gain with representation.
“The worst thing that can happen is a sheriff deputy shows up at their door and puts their belongings on the street. That almost never happens with legal representation,” says Pollock. “Lawyers help them attain more time to pay rent and keep an eviction off their record. They can also significantly reduce arrears…so there’s less chance of that being on their record.”
Since the start of the pandemic, housing advocates around the country and locally have been bracing for a wave of evictions.
Sereno says that the filing of evictions never stopped during the pandemic. But the numbers have been lower than feared precisely because advocates were sounding alarms and the federal government responded with funding.
“Everybody was anticipating a tsunami of evictions,” Sereno says. “The fact that they didn’t take place is because we were pumping out about $1 million a month in rental assistance.”
From July 2020 until September 2020, the Tenant Resource Center distributed about $9.6 million of CARES Act funding to more than 10,000 households, according to Sereno. In 2021, it distributed more than $15.7 million.
The Center is no longer distributing rental assistance funds. In the city of Madison, it’s now being handled by the Community Action Coalition; outside of the city the funds are being handled by Urban Triage.
But the Center is now working to connect tenants to lawyers in hopes of reducing evictions. The referrals were made possible with an initial $1.7 million grant from the city of Madison, as well as funding from the county and some private sources. The Tenant Resource Center has enough funding for the program through the end of 2023. However, Sereno says there isn’t enough money to give everyone free legal help. “That would require 12-plus full-time attorneys in addition to all of the other housing staff needed to meet the projected demand,” Sereno says.
The Evictions Defense Clinic started in August and is still gearing up, says Erica López, who leads the clinic. It’s taking about four cases a week. Eviction cases can often be very simple, such as when tenants have been unable to pay rent, López says. But other times they can be much more complex, including when there’s a question about behavior in a unit. “Was it the neighbor who made the noise violation?” López gives as an example.
Traditionally, landlords haven’t always followed the proper procedures in filing foran eviction, though she adds that they’re getting better in Dane County.
The clinic has been trying to focus on helping people who are especially at risk of eviction. “There’s a lot of data that there are marginalized groups that face a higher risk of eviction, people with disabilities, people of color,” she says.
Sereno says that the clinic has been able to offer help to one particularly marginalized group. “One of the huge things the UW clinic has brought on is representation for undocumented people,” Sereno says. “They were the first people let go and the last people back to work.”
Bayrd says that many tenants facing eviction never connect with a lawyer because the process is confusing and the law favors landlords.
“Evictions are scary,” she says. “Tenants go into panic mode. You’re about to become homeless. It’s really overwhelming.”
Robin Sereno, executive director of the Tenant Resource Center
Sereno: Only about 3 percent of people facing eviction have legal counsel.
Landlords in the United States have traditionally had all the power over tenants, Pollock says. This is especially true in cities like Madison where there’s a housing shortage.
“The most you might negotiate over is the actual rent. But if you try to do that, a lot of landlords will say, ‘I don’t want to deal with you,’” Pollock says. “They’re so used to dictating the terms. The moment you start, they’re already in charge.”
Generally, landlords have fought against providing counsel for tenants, but he’s seeing less resistance these days. Many landlords recognize that they benefit in having disputes worked out in a fair manner.
The early results show providing counsel has a huge impact. New York City found that 84 percent of people facing eviction stayed in their home, Pollock says. San Francisco saw 67 percent stay in their home. And in Cleveland, which used a slightly different metric, 93 percent avoided eviction or an involuntary move.
Pollock says that it’s hard to estimate how much it would cost the country to provide legal counsel to anyone facing evictions. “The cost of hiring an attorney in New York City versus rural Kentucky is night and day,” he says.
But providing that counsel will invariably save money on other social services, he adds. “The cost of dealing with someone facing eviction versus when they’re homeless is much, much cheaper.”
When someone loses their home, they might end up at a homeless shelter and their children might be placed in protective custody. They also might lose their job and collect unemployment and other assistance, says Pollock.
“There are lots of ways that that cost keeps going up.”
[Editor's note: John Pollock's name was spelled incorrectly in some references when first posted. Also, the number of cities that have passed laws giving tenants a right to counsel in eviction proceedings is 13, not 10, as originally noted.]
