Time to confront state eviction crisis, with lawyers
I was teaching public high school when I first heard “It starts in the home.”
It is a loaded phrase, one historically weaponized against low-income and communities of color to abdicate responsibility for addressing their distinct challenges. History considered, the phrase also marks something inherently American about the way we discuss the intersection of the home and public school. Both are critical for fostering engaged and compassionate members of society, but unlike a public education, neither the home itself nor protection against its loss is guaranteed by law.
Three cities in Connecticut are on the list of the top 50 eviction rates in the nation, and four are in the top 100. What does it mean when the state neither guarantees nor protects the shelters in which our children are raised?
We hover proudly near the top of various national rankings: our poverty rate is low, our median income is high, and in aggregate, we have excellent public schools. Against the flourishing backdrop, however, there is harrowing data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Nationally, Waterbury ranked No. 22, Hartford No. 29 and Bridgeport No. 39 for eviction rates, and each evicted between four and six homes per day in 2016, figures well above the national average.
A simple internet search for these cities yields no shortage of reports on “failing” schools, high poverty rates and homelessness. It is no coincidence that eviction is a known driver of all three. The effects of eviction on low-income families are devastating on a personal level, creating the conditions for poor psychological and physical health and barriers to securing future housing. They are shameful when scaled to a statewide level.
What do low-income tenants need most? Lawyers.
Guaranteed counsel in housing court is a direct solution with simple reasoning: Families, children, and communities fare better with stable homes, and court outcomes for low-income renters facing eviction improve dramatically with representation. Nationally, nearly 90 percent of landlords are represented in eviction hearings, and the majority of low-income renters are not; with lawyers, people are more likely to keep their homes.
New York City provides an example. The city became the first in the country to implement a “right to counsel” law that mandated legal representation for low-income tenants. One study anticipated a net savings of over $320 million annually from reduced shelter use. Our state law school, located in the city that evicted 1 in every 18 renting households in 2016, can establish a housing clinic that addresses the unique housing landscape of Hartford, where 76 percent of all homes are rented.
Establishing a housing clinic will equip UConn Law School to better live its mission to “engage in community outreach that serves the unmet legal needs of residents of our city, region and state.” Our most vulnerable citizens will have greater access to legal representation, along with the personal and social benefits of a stable home made more widely available. A housing clinic will also provide future generations of state lawmakers and attorneys necessary experience in, and exposure to, housing law. We cannot address problems that we are ignorant of.
More than 300 years ago, in 1717, the Connecticut General Assembly mandated that every parish have a school and that its town pay for indigent students. Though the school as an institution was not yet public, it embodied the spirit of one that was for, and protected by, the people.
The same cannot yet be said for the place we are told it all starts: the home. While the justification for providing attorneys to low-income renters can be numerically quantified, the real justification is in our country’s bones: the guarantee to life and liberty.
Sociologist Matthew Desmond, the nation’s leading researcher on eviction and founder of the Eviction Lab, calls home “the wellspring of personhood.” We must question the kind of persons we expect to nurture without guaranteeing better chances for stable homes and vibrant, engaged communities.
When I first read Connecticut’s eviction data, I was taken back to the classroom when I was told that it starts in the home. I disagree. It rather starts with a home, and Connecticut can and must do better.