Posted February 11, 202211:00 am
By Editorial Board, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
In July 2020, Cleveland became just the fourth U.S. city to provide free legal representation for poor parents facing evictions. The local Legal Aid lawyers who’d fought so long for this fundamental legal safeguard -- and their funders at City Hall, the United Way of Greater Cleveland and elsewhere -- did more than just celebrate and get to work.
They set up guardrails to make sure the Cleveland pilot came with full, independent, statistical evaluations, to quantify its sweeping economic benefits to the city -- and also, as it happens, to the Cleveland schools, Cuyahoga County and the state of Ohio, more generally.
Those combined city and county savings, per independent evaluators from the Stout Risius Ross LLC investment banking and consulting firm, dwarf the $2.7 million first-year cost for the Cleveland right-to-counsel project.
Some benefits defy easy quantification -- but are also a big reason Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin, raised by a single mom, who lived in five different locations and attended seven different schools by the time he was in eighth grade, strongly supports this law.
The right-to-counsel law is a fundamental justice law -- giving very poor families in Cleveland access to assured legal representation when something as consequential as loss of shelter is on the line.
And it’s a fundamental anti-poverty and housing stability law, as Griffin also points out -- impacting some of the city’s poorest families, those largely led by Black single moms, who rent in some of the city’s poorest minority neighborhoods and live in some of the city’s most compromised housing.
That’s why success of the right-to-counsel law will carry huge wins for Clevelanders and equity.
But evaluators also documented big gains for Cuyahoga County, which saw savings in avoided social-services safety-net spending, such as foster-care placements and homelessness, emergency housing and economic supports. (Other avoided costs came in local hospitals’ charity care, and state Medicaid spending.)
The savings for the city and county were so intertwined that the Stout evaluators had to list them together.
This argues powerfully for widening Cleveland’s right-to-counsel law to all of Cuyahoga County.
Last year, County Council recognized the importance of keeping county residents in their homes by directing $2 million in federal funds to local Legal Aid lawyers for legal assistance to poorer residents facing eviction for COVID-19-related reasons. It wasn’t a right-to-counsel law, but it showed why Cuyahoga County, with its larger budget and broader social-services role, would benefit from adopting a similar law.
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland also reached out last year to all 12 of the county’s suburban municipal courts for help getting eviction-prevention-assistance information out to litigants. Only half agreed to cooperate, according to the Stout report. That’s shameful and another sign that Cuyahoga County officials need to be proactive in extending right-to-counsel to all parts of the county.
In Cleveland, Griffin hopes to see the law’s funding sources broadened; however, using the city’s one-time American Rescue Plan Act money should be avoided or minimized. Sustainable funding is what’s needed; that’s why a larger budgetary contribution from Cleveland and a funding commitment from Cuyahoga County would be huge.
For the city and county together, evaluators found right-to-counsel savings of $1.8 million to $1.9 million from “avoided” spending. Another $2.5 million to $2.8 million was saved in “retained” value -- continued Cleveland schools funding for kids who would otherwise have been displaced, for instance, and the economic and consumer benefits of keeping families in their homes.
That combined $4.3 million to $4.7 million savings was 1.66 times the $2.7 million the Cleveland right-to-counsel law cost last year.
The program was also remarkably successful at doing what it was set up to do -- helping 93% of 650 Cleveland families with children who faced eviction or forced loss of shelter stay in their homes and keeping hundreds more families out of eviction proceedings by helping them get emergency rental assistance, paid directly to landlords.
Among likely savings the consultants were not able to quantify but hope to in future reports were those from avoiding certain negative impacts, including on evicted tenants; on evicted children’s long-term educational, judicial and economic prospects; on mental health care costs; on family, community and neighborhood instability; and on Cleveland’s municipal court system.
Cleveland’s right-to-counsel law has also revealed both the stunning power of emergency rental assistance -- billions in federal funds were allotted nationally and millions spent locally -- and also of thinking out of the box about eviction prevention.
One of the largest local landlords filing evictions has long been the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. Last year, CMHA filed zero evictions. The Stout evaluators praised CMHA for taking “remarkable steps to support tenants who are behind on their rent or who may have breached the terms of their lease. These supports often include connecting tenants to social workers, mental health counselors, or other internal/external resources.”
Legal Aid officials anticipate that, overall, local eviction filings will rise this year, pushing costs to an estimated $3.2 million. But the favorable 2021 results, combined with the positive impact of emergency rental assistance, should also lead to more innovative and collaborative approaches -- and a new countywide right-to-counsel law.
About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.
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This editorial was published February 11, 2022 on cleveland.com: Cleveland right-to-counsel eviction law should expand to Cuyahoga County: editorial - cleveland.com