Baltimore City becomes 7th U.S. jurisdiction to enact right to counsel in evictions!
Quick Facts
Baltimore City sees 140,000 eviction cases filed and nearly 70,000 evictions ordered each year. In these evictions, only 1% of tenants have a lawyer.
When they have counsel, 92% of renters avoid disruptive displacement. They avoid loss of housing. They land on their feet.
#RightToCounselBmore is a call for the legal right to a lawyer in eviction cases and a proven, effective measure to reduce displacement.
About Right to Counsel
Having A Lawyer Prevents Displacement
The report The Impact of an Eviction Right to Counsel in Baltimore City, authored by Stout Risius Ross, LLC, and funded by a grant from the Abell Foundation, estimates that 92% of represented tenants would avoid disruptive displacement with a right to counsel in Baltimore City. The translates to 5,777 households and 17,300 people each year. Even apart from the current COVID-19 emergency, Baltimore’s eviction rate is almost 2.5 times the national average, with 6,500 families evicted each year.
Almost 80% of Baltimore City tenants in a 2015 survey had a defense to eviction, but few were successful. Legal representation helps tenants in defending against evictions by challenging conditions of serious disrepair that threaten health and safety, illegal fees, and unfair and deceptive practices. But today, while 96% of landlords are represented in eviction cases, only 1% of tenants are represented.
The Stout report shows that guaranteeing a right to counsel in eviction cases will not only level out this imbalance of power between landlords and tenants, but it will ensure many families can stay in their homes and save the city money over time. To avoid a housing catastrophe, BRU demands that right to counsel, rental assistance, and permanently affordable housing be central to Baltimore and Maryland’s COVID-19 response.
Right to Counsel is Cost Effective
The Stout report finds that an annual investment of $5.7 million in a right to counsel for Baltimore tenants facing eviction would yield $35.6 million in benefits or costs avoided to the City and State including:
$10.6 million related to the costs of homeless shelters, transitional housing, and mental/physical health institution housing for persons with disabilities.
$12.5 million in Medicaid savings related to reduced emergency room and in-patient care by homeless persons;
$2.3 million related to lost state funding to City Schools due to the chronic absence of students experiencing homelessness;
$2.4 million in transportation costs avoided related to students experiencing homelessness in City Schools; and
$7.7 million in foster care costs related to children placed in foster care because of eviction.
Right to Counsel is About Racial Equity and Economic Power
Josephine Murdock is a Baltimore-resident who avoided eviction with the help of an attorney. “I had a rude awakening when my landlord tried to make me homeless because I complained about a gas leak in our apartment complex that he refused to fix for months. I was able to get an attorney. The court ordered the landlord to remedy the gas leak and awarded me some of my rental payments. Without an attorney, I fear for what would have happened to me and all the tenants in our building.”
Tiffany Ralph is secretary of the Bolton House Residents Association, which has fought management to address toxic mold and rodents: “My son and I have no choice but to breathe in this mold as we’re stuck inside with COVID. We need a right to counsel so that folks know that they won’t have to face the landlord alone. Residents want to organize, but some are scared that [the landlord] will retaliate and try to evict them.”
Data analysis by Tim Thomas, PhD, of the University of California at Berkeley’s Evictions Study and Urban Displacement Project, finds that evictions in Baltimore have a disparate impact on African Americans. The number of Black women evicted is 3.9 times higher than the number of white men evicted. “Our demographic estimates show a massive racial disparity making evictions a civil rights issue related to contemporary discrimination in housing access, displacement, and economic inequality linked to the legacies of segregation, policies, and practices directed against persons of color.”
Shamoyia Gardiner is Education Policy Director for Advocates for Children and Youth. “This is where empathy and economic efficiency meet. Policymakers should understand that the benefits of a right to counsel don’t stop with the renter; they extend to entire families, including children and the institutions that serve them. Baltimore City Public Schools stands to save $4.7 million a year related to costs for students experiencing homelessness alone—to say nothing of the mitigation of student trauma.”
Dr. Alison Kraemer is a family physician and sits on the board of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility. “More evictions during COVID-19 would be devastating given that over 12,000 individuals in Baltimore City are currently experiencing homelessness. Persons who experience homelessness struggle with greater physical and mental illness, poor health care access, and increased utilization of hospital services. As a result, they face higher mortality and shorter average lifespans. We join the call for a right to counsel, increased rental assistance and permanently affordable housing to not only save lives now but also to prevent and reduce homelessness in the long-term.”
Reena Shah is a former legal aid attorney and now Executive Director of the Maryland Access to Justice Commission. “A massive wave of evictions in the wake of the COVID- 19 will further destabilize our state and thwart efforts at post-pandemic recovery and economic stabilization. The only legal way to get an eviction in Maryland is through a court order, and the fact that tenants do not have legal representation in their court cases 99% of the time leads to evictions. Attorneys can and do make a difference. Providing a right to counsel in eviction cases goes to the heart of the problem and offers a solution that not only saves money, but has been proven to be effective. This is exactly the kind of solution policy-makers should be pursuing to protect public health and stabilize our economy post-pandemic.”
A Nationwide Movement
This is a movement picking up steam around the country, with Cleveland and Philadelphia as the latest cities to adopt a right to counsel.
Early results from Right-to-Counsel implementation in other jurisdictions such as New York City are encouraging. The RTC NYC Coalition says: “In just the first year of RTC’s five-year phase-in, 84% of the tenants who had a lawyer under the law remained in their homes. In addition, evictions declined more than 5 times faster in ZIP codes where the RTC law is currently in effect than in similar ZIP codes where it is not.”
The Campaign In Context:
In 2014 a coalition of groups in Baltimore City came together to bring attention to what seemed like Baltimore’s hidden crisis: eviction. Right to Housing Alliance, Public Justice Center, Jews United for Justice, and other allies steered national attention to the city’s annual crisis of 6,000-7,000 renter household evictions.
In 2016, we began a multi-year legislative campaign for eviction reform and safe, healthy, stable rental housing. Baltimore Renters United was formed officially in 2017 to launch the local effort of bringing virtually all 1- and 2- unit rental properties into a preventive inspection scheme. In 2018, we won it – a “no license, no rent” policy that bars collection of rent without a valid license and requires state-licensed home inspectors to register with HCD and to certify that they have no conflict of interest in the rental properties/companies they engage with.
But BRU knows that legislative wins to improve rental housing conditions and future steps toward a fair eviction process will ring hollow if renters continue to lack legal representation. Renters facing eviction rarely have a lawyer because in civil suits (unlike criminal cases) defendants have no right to legal representation. Not yet.
In 2020 BRU is working to change the law so that Baltimore City guarantees its residents a right to counsel (RTC) in eviction cases.
Right to Counsel in the News
Right To Counsel was supported by the Baltimore Renters United coalition and partners, including over 20 organizers, advocates, and tenant groups:
Public Justice Center • Jews United for Justice • Maryland Access to Justice Commission • Communities United • Right to Housing Alliance • Homeless Persons Representation Project • Disability Rights Maryland • The ACLU of Maryland • Bolton House Residents Association • Pro Bono Resource Center • Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition • Fair Development Roundtable • Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service • Advocates for Children and Youth • Health Care for the Homeless • Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility • Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Univ. of Maryland School of Law • Green & Healthy Homes Initiative • Civil Justice Network • Maryland Center on Economic Policy • Greater Baltimore Democratic Socialists of America • Fair Housing Action Center of Maryland • Baltimore Healthy Start • Community Action Network • Bloom Collective • National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel • Social Work Community Outreach Services at Univ. of Maryland School of Social Work
Download our Right To Counsel Legislation Fact Sheet or visit our Baltimore City Eviction Data page to read in-depth reports on Baltimore City’s evictions practices and the efficacy of right to counsel in stopping evictions.