Legal Aid sounds alarm on right to counsel

By JANAKI CHADHA

08/14/2023 10:01 AM EDT

Forced displacements are intensely traumatic, and still, the federal government collects almost no data on how many people lose their homes each year, where, and why. | Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

Low-income tenants at risk of eviction in New York City are supposed to be entitled to free legal representation under a 2017 law known as Right to Counsel. But the program has struggled to live up to its mission as legal services groups have been overwhelmed with demand.

Now, the Legal Aid Society is sounding the alarm over procurement requests from the city that it says would gut the program. The solicitation from the Human Resources Administration for organizations that participate in Right to Counsel is based on unreasonable assumptions about the number of cases lawyers can take on and the amount of funding required to sustain that work, according to Adriene Holder, an attorney at Legal Aid.

“What they’re proposing in terms of a funding structure, we don’t think it’ll sustain the program,” she said in an interview. “That structure will also then erode the quality of legal representation.”

The organization submitted a protest letter to HRA last week, which called the solicitation the “antithesis of the intent” of the right to counsel law.

“The city is gutting a program that it admits is successful; in 75 percent of cases where a tenant was represented by counsel in FY 2023, the tenant remained housed,” the organization wrote. “The current RFx would dismantle the momentum providers and tenants have made in shoring up this very important law.”

The group is calling on the city to amend or rescind the procurement requests to “fully live up to its obligation under the law,” Holder said.

HRA spokesperson Neha Sharma said, “All of our efforts prioritize the needs of vulnerable New Yorkers, and we are committed to using every tool at our disposal to ensure that they are getting the full scope of critical services they need and deserve, including reliable access to full representation for New Yorkers facing eviction.”

“As we have significantly increased investments in our first-in-the-nation Right to Counsel program, we are also ensuring we have strong accountability mechanisms in place for the effective and comprehensive delivery of services for at-risk tenants,” Sharma said in a statement.

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Kingsbridge Armory. | Office of the Bronx Borough President

ANOTHER TRY AT THE KINGSBRIDGE ARMORY — POLITICO’s Janaki Chadha: The Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx — the site of multiple failed redevelopment plans — will receive $200 million from the city and state to kick off a new effort, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday. A request for proposals will be released next month for the latest attempt to revitalize the facility, which has been vacant for decades. Responses from developers will be due by the end of the year, and officials will make a decision one year from then, Hochul said.

“That is what I call fast-tracking, because we’ve been slow-tracking for far too long,” Hochul said at a press conference at the armory Tuesday with the mayor and other officials. Hochul acknowledged the failure of previous plans, which have involved a shopping mall and a skating rink.

GATEWAY TUNNEL TO START CONSTRUCTION — Bloomberg’s Skylar Woodhouse: “Evidence of the $16.1 billion, long-delayed, once-canceled effort to build a new tunnel linking New York and New Jersey will finally start appearing on Manhattan streets in the coming weeks. Work is set to begin in Hudson Yards, the waterfront neighborhood on Manhattan’s west side, on a link to connect Penn Station with the Hudson Tunnel, the new regional and commuter rail link known as the Gateway project.

“‘I didn’t think a year ago that we were gonna be in a position where I could say, wow, we’re gonna see a shovel in the ground,’ said Alicia Glen, New York commissioner and co-chair of the Gateway Development Commission, in an interview Wednesday. ‘But I feel pretty good about that.’”

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Hundreds of migrants line up early on August 1, 2023, for placement at the Roosevelt Hotel intake center in New York. Many newly arrived migrants have been waiting outside the Roosevelt Hotel, which has been turned into a migrant reception center, to try to secure temporary housing. | Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

FINDING SPACE FOR MIGRANTS — The New York Times’ Andy Newman and Nate Schweber: “For several nights last week, New York City’s migrant crisis seemed to have passed a breaking point: As many as 300 newly arrived migrants were left to sleep on the sidewalk outside the main processing center in Midtown Manhattan.

Mayor Eric Adams said the city had simply run out of room in its sprawling, ever-growing network of emergency shelters, after receiving nearly 100,000 immigrants since last year. Images of men crammed behind metal barricades in a line that wound around a Manhattan block drew comparisons to migrant surges that have overwhelmed the streets of European countries and chaotic tent cities on the West Coast.

But by the end of the week, the overnight line had disappeared.So where has the city been putting everyone? That remains a bit of a mystery.”

APARTMENT BUILDINGS IN TROUBLE — Wall Street Journal’s Konrad Putzier and Will Parker: “Apartment buildings, long considered a real-estate haven, are emerging as the next major trouble spot in the beleaguered commercial-property world. Investors bid up the prices of multifamily buildings for years, attracted by steadily rising rents and the prospect of outsize returns. Many took on too much debt, expecting they could raise rents fast enough to pay it down.

“Unlike office buildings and malls, which have been hit hard by remote work and e-commerce, rental apartments have low vacancy rates. The apartment sector’s main problem isn’t a lack of demand—rents have soared since 2020—it is interest rates. The sudden surge in debt costs last year now threatens to wipe out many multifamily owners across the country.”

ONE COMPLEX SEES THOUSANDS OF EVICTION FILINGS — Gothamist’s David Brand and Neil Mehta: “The owner of the sprawling Flatbush Gardens apartment complex has filed to evict more than a third of the nearly 2,500 households there since the start of 2022, fueling a rise in removals in the neighborhood that outpaces any other section of Brooklyn.

“City marshals have so far carried out 50 evictions at Flatbush Gardens after a pandemic-inspired moratorium on removals ended 19 months ago, a Gothamist analysis of city eviction data found. Flatbush Gardens resident Paulette James, 75, is among those in jeopardy. She’s familiar with the hazards common around the complex, and the landlord’s well-practiced strategy of taking tenants to court to reclaim back rent, often for relatively small amounts.”

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