This year’s city budget is adding roughly $20 million a year to the “Right to Counsel” program, which provides free legal representation to tens of thousands of renters in New York City.
The boost followed months of Mayor Eric Adams warning painful cuts will be necessary to balance this year’s budget — and weeks of tense negotiations between Adams and the City Council, which bucked against the mayor’s attempts to cut key social services.
New York was the first U.S. city to establish a right to counsel for low-income tenants under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. With housing prices skyrocketing and evictions on the rise, elected officials and advocates said the funding provides a crucial lifeline for residents facing eviction.
“This $20 million that we got for Right to Counsel is pretty significant,” said Councilmember Shaun Abreu, a former tenant lawyer who now represents parts of Manhattan.
Perhaps more significant, Abreu added, is that the program will keep that funding level as a minimum for at least the next five years.
“That $20 million is to be the floor of [future] negotiations, I think that gives us a lot of ammo as a Council to get more resources in coming years,” he said.
The increase comes as $17 million was cut from decades-old programs for detainees at Rikers as well as cuts to homeless services. It also agencies have experienced 4,700 vacancies, which have reportedly impaired city services.
In an emailed statement, Adams' spokesperson Jonah Allon said, “protecting New Yorkers from unlawful evictions and harassment is a top priority for this administration. We were proud to work with the Council as part of this budget agreement to baseline an increase funding for Right to Counsel.”
Budget negotiators said “Right to Counsel” funding was a priority for Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the funding increase was made possible in large part because of an aggressive constellation of legal providers who lobbied the mayor’s office directly.
“It was a full court effort,” Abreu said. “If it weren't for this full court effort, I don't think that we would've gotten this far.”
Less enthused were groups representing landlords who said the spending plan just throws money at “a broken system.”
“Instead of coming up with a system to help struggling renters pay their rent, we're just helping lawyers,” said Rochel Leah Goldblatt, a spokesperson for the property owners group Community Housing Improvement Program.
Similarly, Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, said, “more money at a bigger-picture problem is fueling an unsustainable system. Housing Court itself needs to be fully staffed with more judges, attorneys and clerks.”
The roughly $20 million in additional funding is part of some $46 million in funding for legal services, according to those familiar with the budget negotiations: $10 million is for the 2023 fiscal year Right to Counsel Program, which ended June 30; $20 million is for eviction defense, which is mostly made up of Right to Counsel; and $16 million was included for criminal defense, which gets most of its funding from the state.
Nonprofit providers of the Right to Counsel program currently receive about $186 million in contracts a year, according to City Hall. Providers say this sum falls far short of what’s actually needed to handle the 146,000 eviction cases filed by landlords since the start of last year. Providers asked for $461 million.
“So $20 million is going to mean that thousands of people who are eligible for Right to Counsel under the local law are not going to get it, and that’s tragic,” said Susanna Blankley, coordinator for the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition.
In 2017, the city enacted a partial right to counsel law, initially guaranteeing access to attorneys for tenants facing eviction in specific low-income and gentrifying neighborhoods. In 2021, the program expanded to cover tenants citywide. Before implementation of the law, only around 1% of tenants appeared in housing court with a lawyer, according to state court system data. This year, about 36% of tenants did, compared to 98% of landlords.
A 2021 report from the Office of Civil Justice found that about 84% of tenants who had a lawyer managed to stay in their homes.
Raun Rasmussen, the executive director of Legal Services NYC, which provides tenant defense, says the extra funding highlights how the city depends on nonprofit contractors to fulfill its obligations under the law.
“Although it's really a drop in the bucket, what's important is that it’s an acknowledgement that the city is not fairly funding the work that we do,” he said.
Another legal provider, the Urban Justice Center, said that at least adding funding in an austerity budget shows commitment on the part of the City Council and the mayor.
“I think we see this as a starting point from which we can continue to work together to get the funding level for Right to Counsel,” said Marika Dias, managing director of the Safety Net Project at the Urban Justice Center.
