Evictions are racing ahead faster than the city can provide attorneys for the tenants with housing troubles, says Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.
Housing courts are set to start handling cases in person on Monday, but judges should not hear cases unless the tenants have legal representation, Levine told the Daily News on Sunday.
While numerous tenants are eligible for free lawyers under city law, they aren’t getting them due to overwhelming demand, he said.
“We don’t want any cases going forward if the tenant doesn’t have an attorney,” Levine said. “That’s the only way to guarantee fairness and justice in these proceedings.”
More than 219,000 eviction cases became active after the state’s eviction moratorium ended in January, according to Levine. He estimated the number of tenants who aren’t getting the free legal help for which they’re eligible is in the “hundreds.”
The spike in cases has put a huge strain on the law firms providing free representation to tenants under the city’s “Right to Counsel” law. Some lawyers are handling 60 to 80 cases each, according to the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition.
In the Bronx, judges are hearing two cases every 15 minutes, up from one case per half hour, the group recently said in a letter to Janet DiFiore, the chief judge of the state court system.
“It’s outrageous that eviction cases would move forward in those situations,” Levine said.
However, in recent instructions about the resumption of in-person cases, DiFiore made no concessions to the legal coalition’s call for judges to only hear cases in which tenants have lawyers and to adjourn the rest until legal providers are able to take on more cases.
Levine and Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson were planning to hold a news conference on the issue outside Bronx Housing Court on Monday.
“We want to shine a light on the failure of the system to live up to this legally established right to counsel so that we get action to fix it,” Levine said.
