Members of the Board of Aldermen heard the successes and challenges of a St. Louis program that city officials hoped would help thousands of tenants facing eviction at an oversight hearing Wednesday night.
The board approved its Right to Counsel program in 2023 and launched it last year as the Housing Eviction Law Program. It aimed to pair city residents facing eviction with free legal defense and aid, but the program struggled in its first year after receiving just a fraction of its proposed funding.
The ordinance that created the program called for somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.5 million in funding over a two-year period, though the city has only allocated $685,000 in American Rescue Plan funds…