A housing lifeline for low-income residents

What you may not learn on television is that when it comes to civil cases, including housing and eviction disputes, there is no right to counsel in a system that favors landlords.

News Story (Ohio)

Jeremy Nobile
Crain’s Cleveland Business
July 7, 2019
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Tags: Housing: Eviction, Housing: Right to Counsel

Organizations mentioned/involved: Legal Aid Society of Cleveland

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DETAILS

The Housing Justice Alliance, an initiative led by the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, aims to restore balance for low-income residents who could never afford an attorney on their own.

If successfully established, it could make Cleveland just the fourth city in the country — behind New York City, San Francisco and Newark, N.J. — with a guaranteed right to counsel, something that stands to benefit not just the individuals and their families facing eviction, but the wider community and, perhaps counterintuitively, even the real estate market itself.

Statistics from the Ohio Supreme Court indicate there are roughly 9,000 evictions filed each year in Cleveland — where about 58% of all homes are rentals — and about 20,000 countywide.