Kansas City resident Ruby Watson was excited when the City Council passed a law in December guaranteeing an attorney to any tenant in eviction court.

“It’s important because oftentimes tenants, first of all, can’t afford an attorney, which is probably why they were being evicted in the first place,” Watson said. “So they have to go to court alone, fearing that they will more than likely be evicted because they didn’t have any representation to help work out, let’s say, maybe a payment plan or something along those lines, as well as to avoid eviction.”

Without a lawyer, tenants are more likely to lose their case and end up with an eviction on their record. Recent data from the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, an organization supporting tenants’ right-to-counsel laws, found that an average of 3% of tenants are represented in eviction proceedings versus 81% of landlords.

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