No Lawyers Remain For NYC Low-Income Eviction Cases, Advocates Warn

NEW YORK CITY — Hundreds of low-income New York City dwellers facing eviction are running into a serious hurdle to keeping a roof over their heads: there aren’t enough lawyers to represent them in court.

Attorneys for The Legal Aid Society warned court officials this week about housing court lawyer shortfalls. They said 130 cases in Manhattan and 100 in Brooklyn could go forward this month without tenants getting legal counsel.

The Office of Court Administration needs to stop putting eviction cases on the docket, they argued.

“Our request to OCA is simple: limit the calendaring of these cases, according to provider capacity, so all tenants at risk of eviction have legal representation,” said Adriene Holder, attorney-in-charge of civil practice at The Legal Aid Society, in a statement. “The Court has done so when it experiences similar backlog and judicial staffing capacity issues in other courts, and Housing Court should be no different.”

The city’s “Right To Counsel” law intends to give all tenants legal representation in housing court.

But The Legal Aid Society and other advocates have warned that a backlog of eviction cases from the coronavirus pandemic threatened their ability to fulfill that goal. There are more than 200,000 eviction cases pending in New York City Housing court, with roughly 7,000 filed in March alone, advocates said.

Overwhelmed public defenders this month said they couldn’t handle more eviction cases in Queens, Patch previously reported.