Tenants’ Right to Counsel on the Move, Next Stop Newark

As part of that effort, the New Jersey city is emulating a policy that’s been pioneered in New York.

News Story (New Jersey)

Jared Brey
NextCity.org
January 10, 2019
READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Tags: Civil Right to Counsel, Housing: Eviction

Organizations mentioned/involved: National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC)

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DETAILS

John Pollock, a staff attorney at the Public Justice Center and coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, says that momentum is on the side of the movement to provide lawyers for tenants facing eviction. Officials are currently working on similar efforts in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, and the states of Minnesota and Massachusetts, according to Pollock. The Coalition is “scrambling to keep up,” he says.

“One of the commonalities is the presence of community organizing, which historically has not been the way that the right to counsel has been achieved,” Pollock says. “It has usually been a lawyer-driven movement.”