Posted December 5, 20238:03 pm
By Kim Palmer
The philanthropic arm of Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage is expanding its housing stability effort into other Midwest cities with a more than $1 million investment in the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland’s renter right to counsel program.
The Rocket Community Fund at a news conference on Tuesday, Dec. 5, announced it will commit $1.25 million over five years to create the Cleveland Eviction Defense Fund. The grant will help Legal Aid provide attorneys and other support for Cleveland’s Right to Counsel law, passed in 2019, codifying legal representation in eviction cases for low-income renting families.
“We really believe in the power of Midwestern cities and bringing those cities together,” said Laura Grannemann, executive director of the Rocket Community Fund, about the grant, which will help an estimated 100 renter households in 2023, 310 in 2024 and 260 in 2025.
“We believe that in order for our business to be successful, our community has to be strong,” she said. “Our mission is to leverage all of our resources across the family of companies to ensure that every American has access to safe and health housing.”
The Rocket Fund, which has been active in Detroit’s under-served community for years, came to Cleveland in 2022 with the rollout of a Neighbor to Neighbor survey.
Partnering with Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and 17 local community development corporations (CDCs), Rocket Fund sought to identify critical housing stability issues by canvassing door-to-door. The survey ultimately connected with 9,314 residents who were in some way at risk of displacement. Those connections, Grannemann said, helped the organization better understand the key experiences around eviction, housing stability and home ownership stress.
The subsequent Neighbor to Neighbor report found that in Cleveland, many renters and homeowners experienced stresses that contributed to housing instability in the past 12 months. In the case of the renters, 19% of the respondents reported difficulties paying rent, making them vulnerable to eviction.
"It was the data that came out of that door-to-door outreach effort that showed us a clear path toward investing in the right to counsel as one of the most important efforts we could support in Cleveland,” Grannemann said.
Another factor is the success Legal Aid has had since it launched its program in July 2020.
Before the right to counsel was enacted, less than 2% or renters were represented in court, compared with about 60% of landlords. Since the program began, the percentage of Cleveland residents facing eviction and represented by an attorney has increased eight-fold.
In 2023, about 80% of those eviction cases resulted in the tenant not being forced to make an involuntary move, according to a study conducted for Legal Aid by Case Western Reserve University. Either the eviction is dismissed with the tenant remaining in the home, or the eviction is dismissed and the tenant agrees to voluntarily move out with extra time, said Colleen Cotter, executive director of Cleveland’s Legal Aid.
Legal Aid provides attorneys, and in some cases law students, to help tenants navigate the system. Cotter said an eviction has significant downstream effects for finding future stable housing, or even credit, in the future.
“Renters are vulnerable because evictions can happen extremely quickly,” Cotter said. "Before right to counsel, half of the tenants didn’t show up to court and just defaulted. We think because they believed the system wasn’t going to work for them. Now there is a support system through a very stressful time. It helps you potentially get connected to other resources.”
Using resources from the Rocket family of companies, Grannemann points out that the Rocket Fund plans to continue to apply the data the company has on how to answer the big housing stability questions “and provide an informed big picture analysis to communities like Cleveland and Detroit where there are critical housing needs.”
The first Rocket fund program focuses on eviction, but renters are not the only group facing housing stability. According to the Cleveland Neighbor to Neighbor report, 16% of homeowners said they had trouble paying property taxes, while 9% struggled with mortgage payments. In addition, homeowners are concerned about making utility payments, with 28% worried about water/sewer payments, 30% about electric utilities and 32% about gas.
Grannemann said the Rocket Fund has a number of programs in Detroit to help renters transition to homeownership and to help homeowners afford taxes, upkeep and other expenses that could work in Cleveland in the near future.
“Rocket is a great partner, and even though housing stability, or course, is a top concern because of what we do, we strongly believe that investing in renters and their stability is an important step to a healthy ecosystem,” she said. “You cannot have a healthy housing system that only revolves around home ownership.”
Source: Crain's Cleveland Business - Rocket Community Fund creates Cleveland Eviction Defense Fund