HUD’s announcement comes as Right to Counsel flourishes.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently awarded $20 million in grant funding to help protect low-income renters facing eviction. The funding, allocated under HUD’s Eviction Protection Grant (EPG) program, will support legal services assistance during pretrial, trial and post-trial activities. HUD will award grants to the following non-profit legal services providers:
- Advocates For Basic Legal Equality – Toledo, OH ($1 million)
- Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation – Atlanta, GA ($1.8 million)
- Community Legal Aid, Inc. – Worcester, MA ($2.4 million)
- Connecticut Fair Housing Center – Hartford, CT ($2.4 million)
- Idaho Legal Aid Services – Boise, ID ($1.8 million)
- Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, Inc. – Jacksonville, FL ($2.4 million)
- Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada – Las Vegas, NV ($1 million)
- Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York – Albany, NY ($2.4 million)
- Legal Assistance of Western New York, Inc. – Geneva, NY ($2.4 million)
- Legal Services of Eastern Missouri – St. Louis, MO ($2.4 million)
Right to Counsel (RTC) policies continued to flourish in 2021. Three states and at least six cities passed legal representation laws, bumping the total number of jurisdictions with enacted legislation to sixteen. At least a dozen additional jurisdictions considered RTC proposals between 2020 and 2021 with no signs of stopping the discussion in 2022.
During its announcement, HUD disclosed that programmatic information collected from grantees would include identifying information of rental housing providers with “significant” evictions tied to their properties. Furthermore, this information would be made publicly available in future reports. HUD has issued a Notice of Proposed Information Collection (NPIC) to solicit comment on the utility of the EPG.
The National Apartment Association (NAA) is currently working with HUD to fulfill the shared goal of curbing illegal evictions while ensuring that the unique needs of rental housing providers are understood and reflected in future policy development.
For more information on Right to Counsel policy, please contact Sam Gilboard, NAA’s Senior Manager of Public Policy.