Legal aid is a win-win for tenants and county
Deyanira Lopez is a tenant and single mother of a middle schooler. She used to work as a housekeeper before she lost her job during the pandemic, due to her use of public transportation and her employer’s fear of her bringing the virus with her. Since then, it has been difficult for her to keep up with monthly bills, including her rent payments.
The COVID-19 pandemic left many Houstonians struggling to make ends meet. Rents in Houston continue to skyrocket, and with it so have eviction filings. There were 1,584 eviction cases filed last week alone. There are many factors that have led us to this point. The most pressing is long-term underinvestment in affordable housing construction that mirrors a national failure to meet the need. In Houston, only 19 affordable and available homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter household. However, affordable housing construction will not help Houston renters at risk of losing their homes right now. We need fast action to mitigate a historic eviction crisis that is threatening thousands of working families with homelessness every week.
We believe legal reform is an impactful place to begin.
Lopez applied for rental assistance and prayed she’d be among the lucky to receive help. Unfortunately, Lopez’s landlord was not willing to wait for the assistance program to process the payment and filed an eviction lawsuit against her. Lopez’s fears became an imminent reality.
“My son is my world,” Lopez said. “And I had to be strong, like a wall that does not fall down, but I was scared by my landlord’s constant threats.”
The law in Texas is weighted heavily against renters, but even with the law in their favor, many landlords still go beyond their legal rights. As recent reporting in the Houston Chronicle has shown, many landlords steer clear of the courts and illegally evict their tenants, an issue poised to grow with the expansion of investment by private equity in the rental housing market. There are fewer and fewer mom-and-pop landlords willing to wait a couple of weeks for the rent to come in.
Lopez had never been evicted before and was unaware of what to do in court or what protections
she had as a tenant. And, she knew she couldn’t afford a lawyer.
Despite her fears, Lopez went to court on the day of her hearing and felt a glimmer of hope when she heard free legal representation was being offered. She spoke to the attorney present, who uncovered that, because she and her landlord were participating in a rental assistance program, her case was eligible to be abated for 60 days according to the 56th Supreme Court of Texas Emergency Order in response to the COVID crisis. The attorney explained to the judge the stipulations to extend this trial, something that would have been difficult for Lopez to do alone. The judge granted the extension, which assured Lopez and her 13-year-old son some stability while she found a new place to live and allowed her to avoid having an official eviction on her record. When a tenant has an eviction on their record, it can prevent them from moving into safe, sanitary housing since many landlords screen for evictions. Lopez felt relieved when she found an apartment that was still close enough to her son’s school to walk to the bus stop, since she doesn’t own a car.
Rental assistance is critical and has been an effective response to the eviction crisis. The Houston/ Harris County emergency rental assistance program has successfully prevented thousands of evictions. But that money has mostly run out. Lopez herself said the rental assistance she was promised never arrived.
We believe now is the time for our leaders to take aggressive steps to intervene in the legal process by establishing tenant right to counsel in eviction courts. Unlike in criminal proceedings, tenants have no right to representation in civil courts. Providing every tenant with legal representation as they go through their eviction proceedings has been shown to increase court efficiency and fairness, keep tenants in their homes, secure more favorable move-outs for tenants who cannot or do not want to stay in their homes like Lopez, reduce emergency shelter use and lower disruptive displacement overall. These dramatically improved outcomes can be seen in other cities and states that have passed tenant right to counsel.
Although Deyanira Lopez had legal representation, she is among the lucky few. According to January Advisors, in 2022, fewer than 2 percent of tenants in Harris County have an attorney.
On Sept. 27, 2022, Harris County Commissioners Court approved $4 million to be used over four years to fund the Housing Legal Services Fund Program which provides legal aid to tenants facing eviction. While this allocation is an encouraging step forward, it is not enough to ensure every tenant facing eviction, housing instability and homelessness has an attorney. We estimate it would cost approximately $6 millon to $10 million per year to place an attorney and paralegal in every eviction court in Harris County, providing the basic level of access to justice. With that annual investment, we estimate Harris County can earn up to $115 million in net benefits by reducing the strain on public services in health care, homeless shelter, unsheltered homelessness, foster care costs and more. We call on state and local leaders to appropriate fiscal pandemic recovery funds to support families to stay housed in Harris County, the third largest county in the nation, where nearly half of the population are renters and evictions are second highest in the country.
We can’t wait to intervene. It’s time for Harris County to join the 23 other jurisdictions, including our neighbors in San Antonio, who have taken action to establish eviction right to counsel. Right to counsel is right for Harris County.
State Rep. Armando Walle represents District 140 in the Texas House of Representatives. Jay Malone is the political and communications director of the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation. Jordan Pacelli Everett is the senior program manager of the Center for Civic and Public Policy Improvement. Julia Orduña is Southeast Texas regional director of Texas Housers.