Harris County Commissioners Court threw a lifeline to attorneys providing free services to tenants, awarding $4M in contracts to legal aid organizations.
Dozens of people wait for their names to be called outside of the courtroom at the Justice of the Peace Court 5-1 on Chimney Rock Rd. on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023. The nonprofit Lone Star Legal Aid won a $2.6 million contract with Harris County so that a group of attorneys known as the Eviction Defense Coalition can continue providing free on-the-spot legal services in courthouses.When Colby Cummings arrived at her eviction hearing, she'd hardly slept.
Dozens of organizations across Houston argue that Cummings' experience should be what tenants at every eviction docket experience — and for a almost a year during the pandemic, they did. But as funds for lawyers who provide free, on-the-spot legal services ran low, legal aid lawyers found themselves forced to pick which dockets they could attend.
However, some jurisdictions, including Baltimore and Philadelphia, have passed laws guaranteeing the right to a lawyer to low-income renters facing eviction. Five years after New York City implemented a right to counsel, eviction filings declined by about 30 percent,In Harris County, the situation is more complicated. An ad-hoc right to counsel has been stitched together by emergency orders guaranteeing legal aid’s access to courthouses and various organizations funding the lawyers’ time.
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