It’s common for landlords to share horror stories of tenants: people who destroyed their properties, didn’t pay rent and were hard to deal with. The memories stick out for landlords personally. But when making policy around evictions and homelessness, it’s good to remember that quite often it’s the landlords who hold the power.
There is also a process in place to remedy an unfortunate situation for the landlord: Evictions are not pleasant, but there is legal recourse.
Now think about the reverse situation: the tenant with the bad landlord. What recourse is there for someone without the means to pay for a lawyer?
Most landlords are undoubtedly good people trying to do the right thing. However, some don’t respond to tenants’ requests to fix problems with their heat or water. Some threaten illegal evictions, such as by changing the locks or allowing the utility to turn off the electricity.
For tenants with a criminal record or very little money, what will they do when their landlord tells them they owe $5,000, but they actually just owe $500? Or what will they do if their landlord is evicting them, and they aren’t sure the landlord is following the right steps?
Many tenants will likely do nothing and lose their home. The ramifications are long-lasting: Evictions make it harder to find housing in the future, disrupt children’s educations, increase the likelihood of depression and can mean a job loss, too. All of those things have costs not just for families but society.
Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Harvard and author of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” found that women are the face of evictions in the United States. One big discovery he made in his research was how children increase the likelihood of an eviction. People in eviction court are three times more likely to get evicted if they live with children, even after controlling for how much they owed.
“That’s an enormous discrepancy. What you’re seeing there is the landlords’ judgment to work with families without kids on a more regular basis because kids, from a strictly business point of view, can bring certain complications to landlords. So I think mothers do face certain difficulties in the rental market,” Desmond told The Atlantic magazine.
There is legal recourse for tenants, such as through Pine Tree Legal Assistance, but the legal aid group is only able to help in a small percentage of eviction cases. It represented tenants in 14 percent of eviction cases in Maine in fiscal year 2016. Meanwhile, at least 75 percent of landlords have lawyers to help them.
History shows providing lawyers to tenants can help even the playing field and increase the likelihood of a favorable judgment from the court. It doesn’t mean good landlords will suffer at the expense of bad tenants. It just gives more weight to legal protections for tenants who have no one else to defend them from unsavory landlords.
No one questions people’s right to a defense attorney when they’re charged with a crime and could face jail time. It should be no different in civil cases when people face losing their home. A lawyer isn’t going to prevent all tenants from being evicted. But they might be able to win them a little more time to avoid becoming homeless, help with the transition to another apartment or devise a repayment arrangement with the landlord.
We think it’s possible for Bangor to take the lead on this issue and start a pilot program that would, ideally, be expanded statewide in the future. It doesn’t have to be expensive: One year of providing lawyers to all people facing eviction in the city would likely cost about $132,000. Helping a smaller percentage of people — for example, 30 percent — would still represent a significant increase in available legal help and perhaps be more doable financially, to start.
Bangor is small population-wise, and it has a higher-than-average eviction rate, meaning it’s a good place to launch a new program that could help keep people in their homes.
Follow BDN Editorial & Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions on the issues of the day in Maine.