Disrupting the Eviction System: Tenant Right to Counsel
Every year, approximately 7.6 million American renters are threatened with eviction. Faced with the loss of their home, 96 percent of these tenants don’t have an attorney to help them through the legal process. Without that support, they must navigate a maze of housing laws alone. Especially since nearly all landlords (83 percent) have an attorney in eviction court, it’s no surprise that tenants rarely win their cases.
Over the last decade, the scales have started to shift. Starting in 2017, New York City piloted Universal Access to Counsel for tenants facing eviction in select zip codes. The success of the program led to the city’s adoption of the first tenant “right to counsel” (RTC) law in the nation. By the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, 2020, five additional cities had passed a right to counsel law. Today, five states, 19 cities, and two counties have legislatively adopted RTC (see Figure 1), and over 80 additional cities and counties and eleven states were actively considering or piloting such programs.
In an article published in the journal Housing Policy Debate, we describe how RTC laws have been designed and implemented. Why did jurisdictions adopt these policies? Who has access to the right? How did states, cities, and counties implement them in practice? What challenges affected implementation efforts? How did these policies unfold in the courts?
READ THE ARTICLE:
A Descriptive Analysis of Tenant Right to Counsel Law and Praxis 2017–2024
Emily Benfer, Peter Hepburn, Valerie Nazarro, Leah Robinson, Jamila Michener, & Danya E. Keene
As a growing number of jurisdictions consider adopting RTC—and as researchers seek to analyze the effects of such programs—it is critical to understand their challenges and the keys to their success. In this study, we evaluated 23 out of the 26 jurisdictions that have adopted right to counsel as of April 2025. Here, we highlight five key findings.
Why did legislators adopt the RTC? In 19 of the 23 jurisdictions that now have such a program, lawmakers included preambles that described their objectives or reasoning for introducing it. These statements often represent the factors that are timely and important to legislators and their expectations of the law’s impact. As we show in Figure 2, the purpose of the legislation varies widely across the country.
In more than half of the jurisdictions, lawmakers cited the health consequences of evictions, broader benefits for the community, the housing crisis, and the need for a more fair justice process as justifications for RTC. In some cases, they also mentioned the scale of the eviction crisis and historical inequalities. For example, the Kansas City law recognized that “like many other American cities, Kansas City is haunted by a history of racial segregation, restrictive covenants, redlining, predatory lending, and disinvestment” and “tenants of color, specifically Black women, are disproportionately impacted by evictions due to decades of inequalities in the American housing system.”
Across the 23 programs we studied, 15 limited the right to counsel to tenants who met criteria defined by income level or household characteristics, like presence of a child (Figure 3). Other jurisdictions limited RTC coverage to tenants in certain housing or types of housing cases.
The most common limitation among these programs is income. In many cases, cities have expanded programs and removed eligibility requirements to participate. Louisville, for example, removed the limitation that offered RTC only to households with children and opened it up to all households.
Another important characteristic to consider is when in the eviction process tenants can access legal aid. While in seven jurisdictions an attorney can help at any point during the eviction process, in multiple jurisdictions, a lawyer is only available at the filing or hearing stage. Attorneys can continue to provide legal assistance to tenants during an appeal in 11 jurisdictions and bring affirmative cases—such as for an illegal lockout, record sealing after the case, or a fair housing claim—in nine jurisdictions.
Having a lawyer with you in court through these policies is never automatic. In all jurisdictions that have established the right to counsel, the tenant must make contact with the program to receive legal representation. This typically occurs when the tenant appears in court, responds to provider outreach, or proactively reaches out for help.
Local actors emphasized the importance of increasing access to and knowledge of RTC programs. Programs attempted multiple strategies to encourage tenants to appear in court, from pamphlets to TikTok videos and radio advertisements. In addition, advocates frequently staff tables at community events, festivals, libraries, and back to school events; host know your rights events; or make announcements in the courthouse.
But money tended to be a barrier: without sufficient funding, RTC jurisdictions struggled to meet tenant needs and fill attorney positions. For example, the right to counsel budget in one jurisdiction was only enough to hire two additional attorneys, who stretched to handle 200 cases in a system with 6,000 eviction cases filed annually. Even where funding was available, multiple large jurisdictions struggled to identify a pool of attorneys to staff the program.
Without enough funds, the goals of RTC that lawmakers themselves established—from protecting public health to addressing eviction to upholding fundamental principles of fairness and justice—will be hard to achieve.
Connecting people that need help with the services that a government offers is always a challenge. But in nine jurisdictions that we studied, local actors described how RTC promoted coordination among service providers through a central intake process, whether that was online, by telephone, or both.
In some jurisdictions, the central intake doubled as a hotline where tenants who were not eligible for legal assistance could receive brief advice and information about their rights. Most jurisdictions took a “no wrong door” approach and allowed tenants to contact legal service providers directly. This integrated approach was described as a model for service areas beyond eviction prevention.
Coordination among service providers also helped prevent confusion and duplication of efforts, while reducing stress among tenants. A local actor described how coordination between providers relieved the burden of searching for an attorney as well as the “re-traumatization” that comes with explaining the situation to multiple people.
In some cases, RTC shifted the court’s treatment of the entire eviction process. In jurisdictions where the court took an active role in administering RTC, local actors described “a complete shift in the landscape.” Instead of the pre-RTC status quo wherein judges rapidly processed cases and routinely ordered default evictions, they now regularly informed tenants of their rights and postponed hearings to allow time to obtain a lawyer.
Instead of “rubber stamped” evictions, courts became less likely to unquestioningly accept landlords’ demand for rent or possession and instead considered defenses that would allow the tenant to stay. For example, in multiple jurisdictions, local actors credited RTC for increased enforcement of the tenant’s right to safe housing conditions, which had been “completely ignored” prior to RTC.
Tenants’ new-found voice in court led to the development of new landlord-tenant caselaw, typically in the tenants’ favor. One actor described the significance of RTC to the development of protective laws: “Right to counsel and having lawyers is not simply about having somebody who’s going to accept the system as it is and walk you through what goes on in court, but having somebody who really understands the law and is going to vigorously advocate [for you, and] look at the laws and the conditions under which housing rights are being litigated and think transformatively about how to change them.”
RTC puts tenants in a position to advocate and seek further systemic changes. This effect can be seen in local pushes for greater legislative action, such as “just cause” laws and increased affordable housing.
RTC programs can have substantial benefits, from stabilizing housing to changing eviction court systems and increasing tenant protections. But approaches to design and implementation, as well as funding levels, vary in ways that impact the quality of the benefits that tenants receive and the success of the program overall. Due to the ongoing threat of eviction and its effect on households and the community at large, it is necessary to fully understand these measures and how they are implemented in practice. Our work provides researchers and policymakers with the tools to advance, evaluate, and refine RTC in ways that safeguard the communities most impacted by eviction.
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