City is failing to provide attorneys to New Yorkers facing eviction, new report shows
/By Noah Powelson
New York City is failing to meet its obligation to provide legal representation to low-income New Yorkers facing eviction, a new report for the city’s comptroller’s office revealed.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander on Friday released his office’s new report on the current status of the city’s Right to Counsel mandate, a 2017 law that created a program to provide full and free legal representation to every tenant facing eviction in the city. The program, which has long struggled, remains underfunded and legal organizations that provide RTC services suffer from serious staff retention issues, the report says, leaving the city far behind its goal of providing representation for everyone in Housing Court who needs it.
Standing outside the Manhattan Civil Courthouse, Lander rallied with tenants who faced eviction and attorneys to call on the city to boost its funding to the RTC program.
“What we have is the worst housing crisis ever,” Lander said. “Eviction rising, representation falling, rent is going up, more families being evicted, more families are going to wind up homeless. This is a crisis and we need to focus on fixing it.”
The report found that, across all five boroughs, RTC representation rates dropped from 71 percent in 2021 to 42 percent in 2024, meaning only 4 out of 10 New Yorkers facing eviction had legal representation.
The trouble with the program comes as there have been 37,000 court-ordered evictions since January 2022, according to the report.
Neighborhoods with higher rates of low-income Black and Latino residents also had the highest rates of eviction filings, eviction execution and lack of legal representation in housing court.
Of all five boroughs, the Bronx suffered the most from the lack of representation, the report found. Of the 10 ZIP codes within the city that have the most eviction filings, all 10 are in the Bronx. In 2021, 88 percent of low-income tenants facing eviction were connected with an attorney. But by 2024, that number dropped to 31 percent.
Queens also saw a significant drop in representation, going from 81 percent in 2021 to 46 percent in 2024.
Staten Island was the only borough that saw an improvement, going from 68 percent to 73 percent during that time frame. However, Staten Island’s is still down from its peak period of legal representation in 2022, when they sat at 84 percent.
Lander, who is running for mayor, blamed incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams for failing to appropriate proper funding to the RTC program. The program’s budget is subject to approval from the mayor and City Council each year.
“That Right to Counsel legislation was an amazing new opportunity for New York City to prevent low-income families to be evicted into homelessness time and time again,” Lander said. “Unfortunately, the Adams administration is utterly failing to provide representation to low-income tenants facing eviction in housing court, as required by law.”
The comptroller also took shots at former New York Governor and currently mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, accusing the Queens-raised politician of exasperating the housing crisis by reducing city shelter funding during his tenure.
Lander laid out several recommendations in the report, including creating a clear funding plan and timeline to meet 100 percent legal representation of low-income New Yorkers facing eviction.
The comptroller also recommended reforming the RTC contracting process to prevent delays in paying legal service providers for their work.
The fight to connect all low-income tenants facing eviction with an attorney began around a decade ago.
The Right to Counsel Coalition, made up of tenants, organizers, advocates and legal services organizations, was formed in 2014 following years of steadily increasing eviction rates throughout the 2000s. According to a report by the Office of Civil Justice, there were around 29,000 court ordered eviction in 2013.
The Coalition and then-City Councilmember Mark Levine advocated for a city RTC program for three years before the City Council passed legislation enacting the program in August 2017. The new law required the Office of Civil Justice to provide full representation to all income eligible tenants and access to legal services to every tenant facing eviction in New York City by 2022, which was planned out in a phased approach.
Under the law, an income-eligible tenant is one whose household annual income does not exceed 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines.
The city saw gradual increase in RTC representation and decrease in eviction cases until 2020 when a moratorium on evictions was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the eviction moratorium ended in 2021, eviction case filings rose by 440 percent, according to the Comptroller’s office.
Eviction filings and executions are still below the rate they were in 2016, but have continued to climb each year since 2021.
The lifting of the moratorium coincided with the expansion of the RTC program.
Attorneys who represent tenants facing eviction say the lack of RTC funding has made it very difficult for their organizations to maintain their staff and provide clients with effective counsel.
“Without an attorney, the odds of a tenant prevailing in Housing Court are very, very slim,” Pavita Krishnaswamy, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, said. “There’s a reason for that. Housing law is complicated, it is immensely complex. And most tenants do not know the defenses to which they are entitled that they can raise in their eviction proceedings…When they raise those defenses, they are very likely to prevail.”
The Office of Civil Justice reported that 89 percent of tenants who had full legal representation were able to win their eviction cases in 2024.
Krishnaswamy said winning these eviction hearings are critical for public defense firms to raise money, pay off their debts and stay in their communities.
“Let’s be clear, at this point the Right to Counsel has become an unfunded mandate,” Krishnaswamy said. “Our attorneys are deeply passionate about this issue, they fight every day to keep people housed across five boroughs…as long as we underfund or defund this program, it is going to become increasingly difficult for legal services and legal aid providers to retain these talented attorneys.”
