At eviction hearings nationwide where a tenant’s ability to stay in their home is at stake, an average of 97% of tenants come to court with a handicap — they don’t have an attorney.
Unlike criminal proceedings, there are no laws in most places guaranteeing an attorney in landlord-tenant disputes, and while landlords can often afford one, tenants often can’t.
In Jersey City, New Jersey, though, some residents will now have access to legal representation in eviction cases thanks to two bills passed in June, which have put the city at the forefront of a wave of right-to-counsel pushes across the country.
Funded by a 1.5% tax on all new residential development in the city, the bills will raise $20 million per year, James Solomon, a city councilmember and one of the bills’ original sponsors, said. The new counsel office will receive $4 million of that and will provide about 1,500 tenants a year with representation when the laws are fully implemented in about three years. The other $16 million will go to the city’s affordable housing trust fund.
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