OUR RIGHTS, OUR HOMES, OUR FUTURE: A Town Hall to Demand a Tenants' Right to Counsel
Emily Fessler (right) responds to a question during the town hall's Q&A segment, along with Elle Fabro (left) and Paula Green (middle). Photo by Karl Reinkemeyer.
This Saturday, Springfield tenants and allies gathered in Resurrection Church to turn up the pressure on City Council to pass a Right to Counsel in our city. The event was titled Our Rights, Our Homes, Our Future, in reference to a few of the things that a Right to Counsel would protect. City Council has been sitting on an RTC proposal without action for over a year and a half, and STUN has had enough of their stalling.
City Council members Brandon Jenson and Craig Hosmer were in attendance as STUN leader Sarah Barnts and a series of presenters recapped the bleak statistics of eviction in Springfield and the need for a Right to Counsel. This was followed by a Q&A session with the Council members and a panel of RTC experts, including Paula Green, Senior Attorney for Legal Services of Southern Missouri, who previously presented last year's RTC mock trial learn-in; John Pollock, a coordinator with the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel; Emily Fessler, former Continuum of Care Director for the Ozarks Alliance to End Homelessness; and STUN's own Elle Fabro, Eviction Court Watch organizer. The panel gave insightful answers to a number of great questions, such as:
Would it be more cost effective to limit the scope of an RTC program, to cover only those with the highest financial need?
Evictions are not confined to tenants at the lowest income level, and at all levels preventing unnecessary evictions will save money in the long term. -Fessler
Adding income screenings to an already rushed eviction process creates more of a burden to tenants, and data shows that the cost of enforcing limitations outweighs the savings they provide. -Pollock
Should mediation be considered as an alternative?
Mediation is part of the solution, but cannot be the whole solution. -Green
Data shows that mediation without tenant representation does not change eviction outcomes. -Pollock
Will RTC cause rent to increase?
Rent increases are up to landlords. Some landlords consider RTC beneficial to themselves as well (as it gives them additional avenues of recourse to resolve conflicts with the tenant) and so choose not to raise rents. In any case tenants have reported feeling that the value of RTC outweighs a modest increase in rent. -Pollock
Could RTC help landlords recover unpaid rent?
Experience shows that it does, since lawyers can negotiate a mutually beneficial settlement arrangement. -Green
Why not simply spend the money on rental assistance?
It shouldn't be either/or. Rental assistance can resolve temporary issues, but legal representatives can negotiate permanent solutions to long-term problems. In addition, evictions can happen for reasons besides unpaid rent, and not all claims of owed rent are legitimate. -Pollock
Inaccurate claims are not hypothetical. A high proportion of legal cases involve determining what amount, if any, is legally owed. -Green
[Questions and answers have been paraphrased for brevity.]
All in all it was a remarkably nuanced and productive discussion, highlighting several key points of the issue. Jenson and Hosmer took the matter seriously, lamenting the hopeless position they had seen evicted tenants in when they attended Eviction Court Watch sessions. Jenson noted that judges often expressed regret in ruling against tenants, but had no choice because the tenants had not followed the proper procedures, which of course they didn't know how to do.
What happens next has yet to be seen. It is encouraging to see two members of City Council express support for our goals, but it needs more than two supporters to pass. We hope that the message will be spread to the others, and that action will finally be taken. If not, we will continue to press the issue. When we fight we win, and when it comes to protecting Springfield tenants, we will not give up the fight!