LA County to Study Public Lawyers for Tenants in Evictions

Los Angeles County could supply free legal help to renters during home evictions.

County supervisors have approved a motion to allow staff 10 months to write an ordinance guaranteeing at-risk tenants with a right to an attorney during landlord-tenant proceedings, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The ordinance would first set up legal services in unincorporated areas, home to roughly 1 million people. The ordinance would provide certain tenants with lawyers during eviction proceedings.

The Board of Supervisors said it then plans to expand the aid to vulnerable tenants living in the rest of the county — except the city of Los Angeles, where the City Council is working on its own ordinance ensuring tenants have legal representation.

The proposed ordinance would cost $22 million in its first year, according to an April report by the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs.

“Legal representation is expensive and unaffordable to far too many working people,” Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who authored the motion with Supervisor Hilda Solis, told the Times.

A disproportionate number of at-risk renters are Black and Latino, which are most likely in the county to be rent-burdened, Mitchell said.

With the county’s pandemic eviction moratorium having ended in March, the supervisors said they wanted to be sure these at-risk renters had the legal support they needed to stave off homelessness.

They said they wanted to tip the power dynamic between landlords and renters.

A landlord usually shows up to an eviction proceeding with an attorney well versed in housing law. The tenant often shows up alone, with eviction filings full of legal jargon they don’t understand.

Tenant advocates say landlords are much more likely to be represented by a lawyer in eviction proceedings than their renters.

A 2019 analysis of 4,200 eviction cases in L.A. County found that 97 percent of tenants in those cases didn’t have lawyers. Landlords, meanwhile, were unrepresented in 12 percent of cases.

In recent years, more than a dozen jurisdictions — including New York City, San Francisco and Philadelphia — have passed versions of these “right to counsel” laws, according to the Times.

Advocates say having no attorney often leaves renters without a defense, no matter how many tenant protections are on the books to help them.

“If you can’t assert them as a defense, then you’re going to lose,” Barbara Schultz, director of housing justice at Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, told the newspaper.

Max Sherman of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles said most of the eviction cases in county courtrooms stem from nonpayment of rent, and therefore are not likely to be resolved through mediation. Unpaid back rent across greater L.A. could exceed $1 billion, according to a study last year.

Sherman said a right to counsel ordinance in such cases would only drag out the legal proceedings — not stop the evictions altogether.

“Hiring a lawyer paid by the hour does not change a renter’s ability to pay rent,” Sherman said. “We urge the board to adopt a permanent rental assistance program countywide for renters to pay rent — not lawyers.”

— Dana Bartholomew