Juliet M. Brodie & Larisa G. Bowman, Lawyers Aren’t Rent, 75 Stan. L. Rev. (July 2023). Abstract Below.
Most low-income tenants facing eviction do not need a lawyer. They need rent money. Recent policy emphasis on right to counsel obscures the real injustice at play in our eviction courts: the monetization of residential housing, the protection of property and profit at the expense of the poor, and the exploitation of the human need for shelter as a mechanism to line the pockets of the real estate industry. Three-quarters of eviction cases are based on nonpayment of rent. If we want to reduce evictions, tenant lawyers are not the best tool. Rental assistance could resolve, or even help avoid the filing of, most eviction cases. Unprecedented government investment during the COVID-19 pandemic proved this concept, with millions of on-the-brink tenancies saved by $46 billion in public relief funds. The housing justice movement needs to insist that this lesson be learned, and advocate for enduring, meaningful rental assistance (better understood as “landlord subsidies”), if only as a stopgap while we solve the larger crisis of rental affordability in the U.S. If nonpayment cases were diverted to rental assistance programs and non-attorney advocates were available to facilitate the flow of the money, lawyers could devote their energy to the subset of evictions where legal training really makes a difference—those with factual disputes or novel questions of law. Unless and until we recognize a right to affordable housing in this country, what tenants really need is access to rent money, not access to a lawyer.
Poverty Law 