Tenants Facing Eviction Have a Right to Counsel – But Underfunding Subverts that Protection
For decades, the Community Service Society of New York has tracked eviction trends in New York. Our soon-to-be published analysis found that between 2017 and 2024, eviction filings declined by 49 percent, down to 114,000. Court-ordered evictions declined by 26 percent, falling to 15,400.
Our research shows that the vast majority of tenants facing eviction are Black and Latino. Single parents are overrepresented among tenants facing eviction. And in a pandemic-era shift, moderate-income people now make up a growing share of tenants experiencing eviction attempts – a sign of an expanding housing crisis in New York City.
Right to Counsel [also called “RTC,” a local law enacted by the City Council in 2017 providing free representation to tenants facing eviction], local anti-harassment laws, the 2019 rent laws [State measures strengthening protections for tenants of rent-regulated apartments], and new Good Cause eviction protections [enacted by the State in 2024 limiting annual rent increases and specifying conditions for eviction action by landlords] are working in tandem to lower eviction rates in New York City.
At the same time, more than a third of tenants are facing housing court without legal counsel, because of systemic underfunding of the program. The courts are choosing to move cases faster than the legal services providers can take them on, prioritizing speed over the tenants’ right to due process, and in direct violation of the RTC law.
In addition to threatening tenants’ rights, the underfunding of legal services providers exacerbates administrative burdens on an already taxed Human Resources Administration (HRA). During a housing court case, tenants will undoubtedly stop by HRA’s office for emergency assistance grants, also known as one-shot deals, often with the assumption that HRA’s financial assistance is all that is needed to resolve a case.
However, tenants are likely to submit incomplete and even duplicate one-shot deal applications for rental arrears. A legal service provider can offer support and expertise to ensure one complete application is submitted, effectively supporting HRA’s capacity and preventing backlogs and overutilization of City resources.
There are also complex cases when tenants may qualify for FHEPS (Family Homelessness & Eviction Prevention Supplements), a rental subsidy program for families with children at risk of homelessness. The most successful way to apply for FHEPS is for a family to be represented by attorneys of the legal service providers under the OCJ [Office of Civil Justice, the arm of HRA that oversees the City’s RTC program] contracts. The provider can confirm if the family is eligible for FHEPS and submit a complete application packet, which includes pages of information and requires coordination with a tenant’s landlord. Otherwise, tenants may not correctly apply for FHEPS – getting closer to homelessness and having to utilize our Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter system.
While applicants are supposed to be screened by HRA for FHEPS when they submit a one-shot deal application or an initial cash assistance application, this screening process is not without issues. Because complex cases that require FHEPS are not properly referred within HRA departments as outlined in HRA's policy memo, the underfunding of OCJ providers once again affects HRA’s capacity. Tenants often reapply for one-shot deals instead of properly applying for FHEPS.
There is also the issue of housing quality; represented tenants can be more successful at having repairs and maintenance issues resolved during their housing court settlement. When tenants are unrepresented, they may not know how to effectively to settle with landlords or landlords’ attorneys for repairs. When tenants live in units that are not safe and habitable or fail to meet the City’s housing maintenance laws, families are not only at risk of homelessness, but their health is also at risk.
New York City must do more to defend and uphold Right to Counsel. In doing so, not only will the City ensure that all tenants who are denied access to legal representation can receive it, it is also supporting families beyond the courts, as they access other social services within HRA’s broader benefits landscape.
We join legal service providers and the RTCNYC Coalition in calling for full funding for the Right to Counsel law. Full implementation requires, at a minimum, an additional $350 million in funding, which will help ensure there are enough attorneys to represent everyone entitled to RTC.
Oksana Mironova and Yvonne Peña are policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York, a long-established research and advocacy non-profit organization. This Urban Matters is adapted from testimony they gave to the New York City Council on January 30th, 2025.
Photo by: Indypendent
