Cleveland City Council passed legislation on October 12 authorizing a city contract with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland to keep providing free legal representation to low-income tenants facing eviction, and in the process boosted funding for the program from $750,000 to $1.25 million. The increase comes even as several council members pressed for clearer answers about whether the program, known as Right to Counsel, is actually working as intended.
City Council passed the legislation on Monday, according to Cleveland.com, which reported the funding increase and the council committee debate behind it. Right to Counsel provides free housing court representation to Cleveland tenants who have at least one child and household income at or below the federal poverty line, a partnership between the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and United Way of Greater Cleveland in which Legal Aid represents tenants in court while United Way supports the program’s broader operations.
The eligibility rules trace back to Cleveland Codified Ordinance § 375.12, which council passed in October 2019 and which took effect on July 1, 2020, according to the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. That made Cleveland the fourth U.S. city, and the first in the Midwest, to adopt a right-to-counsel law for eviction cases, per the same account.
Council Wants Harder Numbers on Who’s Actually Being Helped
During the committee meeting, Councilman Blaine Griffin said tenants who went to housing court without lawyers were more likely to be evicted, framing the program as a direct response to that imbalance, the station’s report notes. Griffin also said the program had handled 5,370 eviction cases involving about 18,940 residents, per figures cited by Arin Miller-Tait, but he told colleagues the council needs more detail about those cases, including how many tenants ultimately avoided eviction altogether…