Tenant right to counsel

Tenant right to counsel (TRTC) is a proposed right that tenants should be provided with free legal representation, especially when tenants face eviction. As of 2023 in the United States, tenants are represented by lawyers in eviction cases 3% of the time, whereas landlords have legal representation in 80% of cases. TRTC is viewed as a form of homelessness prevention, but eviction potentially implicates a number of other basic human needs, such as child custody, education, employment, and physical/mental health. Generally, tenant right to counsel programs have resulted in lower eviction rates, reduced rent arrears, and a sealed eviction records for tenants who cannot or do not want to stay in their homes.

TRTC programs aim to fix imbalances in legal representation between landlords and tenants as opposed to eviction mediation programs that seek to find agreements between largely unrepresented tenants and represented landlords.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.