Agency Description The Legal Services Corporation of Virginia is requesting a $2.625 million increase in the civil indigent defense General Revenue appropriation in the Governor’s budget for FY 2019 - 2020 to fund staffing of 35 housing attorneys for legal aid to respond to the evictions crisis, one identified by a recent New York Times article that puts five Virginia cities in the nationwide top ten for eviction rates.
The Virginia State Bar provides civil indigent defense to low-income Virginians through contracted services with the Legal Services Corporation of Virginia (LSCV) which funds and provides oversight and administrative support for a statewide Legal Aid delivery system of 10 Legal Aid programs operating out of 35 offices throughout the Commonwealth. Through these programs, economically vulnerable Virginians can receive civil legal assistance and protection concerning basic necessities like food, housing, income and health. Even with our statewide service area coverage, Legal Aid programs have never been sufficiently funded to meet the overwhelming need for legal assistance by the over one million Virginians who qualify for our services. Our own study of the unmet legal needs of low-income Virginians show that we are at best meeting only 20% of those civil legal needs. This study simply corroborated what we knew anecdotally and through many other national and state legal needs studies.
While Legal Aid programs face many infrastructure needs that were severely exacerbated by the Great Recession and funding declines from their major sources of revenue, federal, state filing fee and IOLTA, the eviction crisis requires immediate action to secure stability in housing for thousands of low-income Virginians. Legal Aid is uniquely situated and capable of significantly reducing the evictions of low-income families across Virginia.
While several strategies to reduce evictions are being pursued by Legal Aid through its CARE (Campaign to Reduce Evictions) project, including policy initiatives, nothing will have a greater impact on reducing evictions in Virginia than providing representation of low-income families in the Commonwealth’s housing courts. On any given eviction return day in any of the Commonwealth’s general district courts, hundreds of tenants create an endless stream of summary evictions without benefit of a lawyer. They have judgment pronounced upon them and possession of their homes awarded to landlords, well-represented and practiced in the eviction process. Too many of our evicted families have legitimate defenses to losing their homes, but are unable to understand their rights and protect them without a lawyer.
Meeting Service Priorities – Evictions and Extensive Representation. Earlier this year, Matthew Desmond, Princeton sociology professor and author of the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted, launched Eviction Lab (https://evictionlab.org), a website that hosts detailed data about evictions throughout the nation, and ranks cities and rural areas according to their rate and number of evictions as reflected in court records. According to Eviction Lab, and as widely reported recently in the media, five of the ten “large” cities in the U.S. (i.e., having a population greater than 100,000 residents) with the highest eviction rates are located in Virginia, including Richmond, #2, Hampton, #3, Newport News, #4, Norfolk, #6, and Chesapeake, #10. Another Virginia city, Virginia Beach, is ranked 15th . Three of these cities (Richmond, Hampton and Newport News) have eviction rates over 10 percent. The website also notes that three of the top ten mid-sized eviction cities (Petersburg, #2, Hopewell, #4, and Portsmouth, #5) and two of the top twenty small city/rural area evictors (Prince George, #12, and Bensley, #19) are in Virginia. Renters in these mid-sized and small cities and rural areas in Virginia are at even greater risk of eviction. Desmond’s data reveals eviction rates as high as 17 percent for the City of Petersburg and 20 percent for rural Prince George County. And many of the Virginia cities with the highest eviction rates are also home to large numbers of military personnel – causing them to worry about whether their families in Virginia are facing homelessness while they are deployed.
Around the same time as the release of the eviction data, findings from a recent study of the outcomes in Virginia civl cases involving self-represented litigants were also released. This study, requested by the Virginia Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission, was conducted by the National Center for State Courts and found that litigants in civil matters in Virginia courts who were represented by counsel were far more likely to have favorable case outcomes than unrepresented litigants. According to this study, it is quite common for parties in civil actions to represent themselves. In fact, only one percent of the 500,000 cases handled annually in Virginia’s general district courts involved parties represented by legal counsel. Furthermore, the study also found a high correlation between poverty and the lack of legal representation. Because poor people are unable to afford counsel and Legal Aid programs lack adequate funding, the indigent must represent themselves in court and, hence, are significantly more likely to have negative case outcomes.
When Legal Aid attorneys provide assistance, they usually are only able to offer brief legal advice to clients because of high demand outstripping resources. In the 28,125 cases closed by Virginia’s Legal Aid programs in FY 16-17, clients received brief legal advice 67 percent of the time (or 18,799 cases). Once they receive legal advice, clients may appear in court without representation and still would find themselves at a substantial disadvantage without an attorney, especially when most landlords have attorneys. Legal Aid programs provided more substantial legal assistance such as representation in negotiated litigation, administrative hearings and contested and uncontested court hearings in just 17% or 5,229 of the cases closed in FY 16-17 and extensive in-court representation in just 4% or 1,112 of the cases closed.
Eviction Outcomes In the aforementioned eviction cases, unrepresented tenants lost 62 percent of the time, resulting in evictions and money judgments. However, if tenants were represented by attorneys, they lost just 34 percent of the time and significantly increased their positive outcomes (e.g., kept a roof over their heads and avoided money judgments). Approximately 25% of the cases handled by Legal Aid programs involve housing matters (this would be a much larger number if Legal Aid had the resources to accept all meritorious housing cases). In spite of the many tenants we had to turn away, in FY 16-17, Virginia Legal Aid programs provided legal assistance in 6,062 housing cases, including 3,846 matters involving disputes between private landlords and tenants, 1,001 matters involving federally subsidized housing, and 464 matters involving public housing. The 900 clients who received extensive representation by Legal Aid attorneys achieved the following positive outcomes in their housing cases:
• Over $1,000,000 saved for tenants; • Prevented eviction from private housing – 267 cases, directly benefitting 730 people; • Avoided or obtained redress for illegal or unfair charges by landlord – 135 cases, benefitting 380 people; • Prevented eviction from subsidized housing – 132 cases, benefitting 347 people; • Delayed eviction providing time to seek alternative housing – 119 cases , benefitting 300 people; • Prevented eviction from public housing – 70 cases, benefitting 221 people; • Enforced rights to decent, habitable housing – 104, benefitting 215 people; • Overcame denial of tenant’s rights under lease – 72 cases, benefitting 201 people.
In sum, Legal Aid prevented 469 evictions last year, preventing homelessness for 1,298 Virginians. We delayed an additional 119 evictions for 300 people helping secure time to find another home. We prevented illegal charges and enforced rights to decent, habitable housing for another 311 tenants benefiting 796 people.
If Legal Aid had the resources, the almost 5,000 housing clients last year, who had to settle for brief advice rather than full representation, would have more likely kept a roof over their heads and avoided significant debt with Legal Aid’s help. This is supported by the previously mentioned National Center for State Courts study that shows a 66% liklihood of success if the tenant has a lawyer in court.
The following vignettes from Central Virginia Legal Aid exemplify how extended Legal Aid representation can benefit low income persons in eviction cases, compared to when they represent themselves:
Our Client, a mother of two children, came to CLVAS hours before she was scheduled to be evicted by the sheriff. She thought she had worked out an agreement to pay the remainder of what she owed to her landlord to avoid the eviction. Even after client received the eviction notice from the sheriff the property manager kept assuring her that it would be worked out. On the evening before the scheduled eviction, our Client learned that her landlord was not going to follow their agreement and she was left to scramble. A CVLAS attorney, preparing for another trial that afternoon met with the client in Court and quickly identified a defense. On the fly, he filed a motion to stop the eviction and argued it successfully in court. The eviction was called off and the attorney for the landlord later acknowledged his client’s failure to abide by the agreement. As a result of CVLAS's representation, client and her two children were not evicted just days before her children began a new school year. Our client was a 77-year old disabled senior citizen who lived in a manufactured home in a rural county with his cousin, who is his caretaker. The client’s landlord filed for an eviction in court due to a dispute, not involving rent, between the caretaker and property manager. Because of the client’s age and disability he was not able to seek legal assistance until the day before his case was set for trial. With nowhere else for our disabled client to go if he were evicted, a CVLAS lawyer met with him the morning of trial and agreed to appear on his behalf at trial that afternoon. In addition to a factual defense of the dispute, the lawyer also found that the landlord had filed the eviction before the 30-day time limit and the termination of tenancy notice had expired. At trial the court ruled in our client’s favor on the grounds that the eviction was not timely filed. The CVLAS lawyer was then able to negotiate a settlement of the dispute with the property manager, preserving the home for this elderly client and his caretaker.
Clearly, Legal Aid representation made a difference in these cases. Unfortunately, there are not enough Legal Aid attorneys to represent all of the tenants fighting eviction and unsafe housing conditions. With additional funding, Legal Aid programs across the state can make full representation in these eviction cases a top priority.
If Legal Aid receives the funding requested, our programs will hire up to 35 attorneys, place them in housing courts on eviction docket return days, file appropriate tenants assertions for unsafe living conditions (bed bugs, rodents, water leaks, lack of heat and other utilities, etc.), and provide extended representation in all meritorious cases. We estimate that the $2.625 million requested would fund 35 staff attorney positions at $75,000 per position including benefits.
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