Right to Counsel and Stronger Rent Laws Helped Reduce Evictions in 2019 Oksana Mironova February 24th, 2020

New York was the first city in the country to implement a Right to Counsel (RTC) law. By 2022, all low-income tenants facing an eviction in housing court will have a right to an attorney.[1] The popularity of the law is growing nationwide. Since its passage in New York City, activists working to stem evictions in Newark, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Santa Monica, and San Francisco have won similar campaigns and multiple presidential candidates have called for a national RTC fund.

In June 2019, New York State tenants’ rights were greatly expanded by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA), which strengthened rent regulation and increased eviction protections for all renters. Under HSTPA, all tenants covered by RTC can leverage a broader set of rights in housing court. The results have been positive: legal representation in RTC zip codes has grown to 62 percent, while evictions declined by 29 percent since 2017.

Evictions and RTC implementation

Tenant groups across the country have identified evictions as a major contributor to instability in low-income neighborhoods of color. Our previous research has shown that there is a correlation between neighborhoods with a high share of black or Latinx renters and evictions, controlling for poverty levels. Evictions increase the risk for homelessness and long-term housing insecurity, and have an adverse effect on health, increasing emergency room use and mental health hospitalizations, according to a 2018 study by Robert Collinson and Davin Reed. People who have been evicted are 16 percentage points more likely to file a shelter application in the first two years after their housing court case, compared to an overall shelter application rate of three percent.



Figure 1 shows evictions executed in 2017- 2019 and the share of households under 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), by zip code. South and northwest Bronx, central and eastern Brooklyn, southeast Queens and Far Rockaway, and northern Manhattan have high rates of evictions.

RTC is being rolled out on a zip code by zip code basis, with full implementation expected by 2022. Since January 2020, the law covers 25 zip codes. (For more information about how to access legal counsel in housing court, see Eviction Free NYC.)

In 2010, only two percent of tenants were represented by an attorney in eviction cases, magnifying the power imbalance better landlords and tenants. At the end of FY19,[2] 32 percent of tenants citywide and 62 percent of tenants in RTC zip codes had legal representation. For two years in a row, 84 percent of households represented by government-funded legal service providers were able to remain in their homes.[3]

City funding for RTC is projected to increase incrementally, up to $166M at full implementation, when the law is expected to provide legal services to 400,000 New Yorkers annually. It costs the city $47,000 a year to provide emergency shelter to a single adult and $82,000 for a family. According to the Collinson and Reed study, families impacted by evictions experience longer shelter stays and more frequent emergency room visits, increasing the overall public cost by $8,000 per eviction, compared to baseline shelter and emergency room costs. Since eviction is a strong predictor for homelessness and increased emergency room use, RTC is a sound investment of public dollars.



Tenants are less likely to be evicted if they have access to an attorney. Over the past three years, evictions in RTC zip codes declined by 29 percent, compared to a 16 percent decline in zip codes with similar eviction, poverty, and rental rates. The decline of executed evictions in RTC zip codes accelerated in year two, likely because of increased awareness about the law among tenants and improved implementation strategies in housing court. The eviction reduction in non-RTC zip codes in 2019 is likely linked to the strengthening of the State’s rent laws in June.

Eviction trends city-wide



Evictions in New York City have been on a longer-term decline as a result of tenant organizing and state and local policy change. The campaign for Right to Counsel began in 2014, making evictions an important focus for organizing among tenants. Around the same time, and likely in response, the city and state both began investing in legal assistance programs for households facing eviction to stem homelessness and cut down on tenant harassment. The number of households receiving government-funded legal assistance in housing court more than doubled between FY14 and FY15, and has been expanding since. Figure 3 shows a steady climb in evictions from 2010 to 2013, followed by a sharp reduction in 2015, likely due to the first infusion of government assistance for legal services in housing court.

Evictions declined by 15 percent in 2019, from 19,100 to 16,200 cases citywide.[4] Increased tenant access to attorneys in housing court through RTC contributed to this decline. However, RTC’s implementation was still geographically limited in 2019. Bolstering the effectiveness of the city’s RTC law, the state passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA) in June 2019.

HSTPA significantly strengthened the rights of the 988,000 rent regulated households in New York City, closing loopholes that incentivized evictions, like the vacancy bonus and vacancy decontrol, and limiting unexpected rent hikes by capping Major Capital Improvements (MCIs) and reforming preferential rents. HSTPA also expanded eviction protections for all tenants, providing more time to answer nonpayment petitions, address lease breaches, and come up with money to pay rent arrears. At the same time, RTC is a powerful tool for upholding and interpreting the new rent laws, especially when they are contested in the courts. For example, in a recent rent succession case, a home health aide was able to take over the tenancy of a client’s rent stabilized apartment who passed away. This interpretation of the rent laws would not have been possible without an attorney.

Policy steps toward an eviction-free NYC

Rent protections and right to counsel laws complement each other. Despite declining evictions citywide, many tenants, especially those not covered by rent regulation, remain vulnerable. To further reduce evictions, the State should pass good cause eviction protection, making 600,000 households eligible for additional tenant protections.

In 2019, a survey of Bronx tenants in RTC eligible zip codes by CASA-New Settlement and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition found that about half of respondents did not know about RTC until they first arrived in court. For the law to truly have universal reach, every eligible tenant should understand it before they face an eviction. The original sponsors of the RTC legislation, Council Members Levine and Gibson, are calling for outreach, education, and organizing funding for community-based organizations around RTC. The City should pass Intro 1529 to ensure everyone who is eligible for RTC knows about it before they get to housing court.

To qualify for RTC, a single adult’s annual income cannot exceed about $26,000, meaning that a full-time worker earning a $15 minimum wage does not qualify. Because of New York City’s high cost of living, moderate-income households (or those earning $51,000 for an individual or 82,000 for a family of three)[5] are also vulnerable to housing instability, including eviction.[6] CSS’s 2019 Unheard Third survey shows that 30 percent of moderate-income tenants experienced one or more housing hardship, including falling behind on rent, being threatened with an eviction, and moving in with other people. There is a stark difference in experience with housing hardships among low- and moderate-income tenants, as opposed to middle-/high-income tenants.



To address a housing court representation gap, Councilmembers Levine and Gibson, and the RTCNYC Coalition are proposing to double RTC’s eligibility threshold to 400% FPL. The City should pass Intro 1104 and expand the coverage of this successful law.

Methodology Note: NYC eviction data is published daily by the Department of Investigation (DOI) on the NYC Open Data portal. This dataset includes executed commercial and residential evictions, going back to 2017. It does not include eviction filings or eviction warrants.

Evictions are chaotic and stressful for tenants, and this is reflected in the data - this dataset includes duplicate entries and incorrect and non-existent addresses. CSS deduplicated and geocoded the data. Depending on a researcher’s preferred deduplication and geocoding process, the number of unmatched addresses and the aggregation of evictions into zip codes will differ (we have updated our deduplication process since 2019).

Eviction rates, poverty rates, and the share of rental households were all higher in RTC zip codes. For our RTC vs. non-RTC zipcode analysis, we randomly selected a constant year over year number of RTC zip codes. For the comparison, we selected all the non-RTC zip codes that had eviction, poverty, and rental tenure rates that were lower than the RTC zip code minimums.

Footnotes:

[1] Introduction 214-B was sponsored by Council Members Mark Levine and Vanessa Gibson.

[2] FY19 is July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019.

[3] This figure includes both tenants in Right to Counsel zip codes and tenants served by other OCJ-funded legal service programs in non-RTC zip codes. Comparable data for tenants without counsel is unavailable.

[4] Citywide evictions in July-Dec 2019 (immediately following the passage of the rent laws) declined by 18 percent compared to the same period in 2018 (see Daily News story). Further, June-October 2019 eviction filings declined by 46 percent compared to the same period in 2018 according to analysis by The Wall Street Journal, an early sign of landlord behavior change.

[5] Low-income: under 200 FPL; Moderate-income: 200-400 FPL; Middle-/High-income: 400+ FPL.

[6] DOI does not collect housing court data by income.