Public Interest

A Legal Crisis Is Right Around The Corner And Firms Need To Step Up Now

A wave of evictions are coming and lawyers can help by offering their services pro bono.

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Housing justice is racial justice—a truth that will become all too clear in the coming months as eviction moratoriums expire. As this civil rights crisis unfolds, lawyers must act: By assisting tenants facing eviction, lawyers can help keep families in their homes and prevent a looming disaster..

In the next 60 days or so, our country will see an unprecedented wave of eviction proceedings. And a tragically disproportionate number of tenants facing the loss of their homes will be those whose health and economic stability have been hit hardest by the pandemic: low-income families of color.  COVID-19 laid bare our nation’s legacy of systemic racism and historical discrimination, as Black, Latino, and Indigenous Americans contracted the often-deadly coronavirus and lost jobs at significantly higher rates than did whites. Now, those same communities will face additional fallout from the combined forces of the pandemic and decades of housing discrimination. A perfect wave of homelessness is coming, and low-income individuals and families, particularly in communities of color, are in its path of destruction.

Throughout our nation’s history, housing discrimination has made communities of color especially vulnerable to eviction and all the calamities it brings. The pandemic underscored, exacerbated and further stoked the flames of underlying historical racial inequities, disproportionately impacting those who live at the intersection of race and poverty.  Starting in the 1930s, government-backed redlining made it nearly impossible for families of color to get mortgages, much less at the favorable rates and low down payments available to whites. The Federal Housing Administration in the 1930s and 1940s excluded Black Americans from participation in the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation programs, which helped white families buy homes they might otherwise have found unattainable. When Congress passed the G.I. Bill, which provided unprecedented post-World War II opportunities for veterans to purchase homes and build family wealth, it largely excluded Black veterans. Restrictive covenants likewise kept people of color out of white neighborhoods, further limiting their opportunities to participate in the postwar real estate boom. In all of these ways, our country blocked Black families from acquiring homes and building the kind of wealth that could be passed to succeeding generations. Shut out from home ownership, Black Americans and other people of color were left to rent their homes — making them victims rather than beneficiaries of the near-constant rise in property values. Eviction is the leading cause of homelessness, and it is no coincidence that homelessness disproportionately affects communities of color.  In Los Angeles, just nine percent of the population is Black, yet of the more than 1,200 people who die on the streets each year for lack of shelter, about 35 percent are Black.

Now, with millions of families of color behind on their rent amid the pandemic — a crisis that, again, has disproportionately affected people of color — a wave of evictions threatens to further devastate these communities and put countless more families on the street. But we have the power to combat that threat. Lawyers can and must step in to represent tenants facing eviction, ensure that landlords follow the rules, and help tenants navigate the complicated maze of emergency rent-relief programs — many of which remain awash in undistributed funds.

This will benefit tenants and landlords alike, helping tenants stay in their homes while also using these undistributed funds to make landlords whole.   It would be the height of irony, inefficiency and cruelty for tenants to be evicted and for landlords to lose access to all that back rent while $46 billion of Congressionally allocated rent relief funding remains undistributed. Effective representation makes it far more likely that those funds will be used for their intended purposes, avoiding pain for all involved.

Lawyers can help avert disaster in other ways, too. They can help prevent ruinous default judgments, represent tenants in mediation proceedings, work out payment plans, turn past-due rent into consumer debt rather than grounds for eviction, and prosecute landlords who engage in illegal lockouts and other unlawful pressure tactics. And all of this will have incredible follow-on effects: Health outcomes will improve, children will perform better at school, and families will have the chance to find new jobs — all because a good lawyer got involved. A robust pro bono effort alone will not solve homelessness or our housing crisis, but it is one of many important ways to start the effort.

So the message to our community of attorneys is simple: volunteer. Seek out a local legal-aid provider and get to work. By doing so, you can keep families in their homes, keep families off the street, and ultimately save lives.

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The Los Angeles legal aid community has produced a video that is being distributed among lawyers across Southern California. Celebrity voices urge attorneys to see the connection between racial justice and housing justice, asking lawyers to lend their skills by volunteering to correct these injustices.  Mayor Eric Garcetti and actors and athletes synonymous with Los Angeles are calling upon all attorneys in the region to volunteer to defend people’s ability to stay housed. It is the best and most effective way to fight the racial injustices we have seen so tragically played out for so very long. Here is the link to that video, which concludes with a list of, and contact information for, legal services organizations where you can volunteer.

Lawyers, get ready to step up. This is your moment.

David LashDavid A. Lash is the managing counsel for pro bono and public interest services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. The opinions expressed are his alone. The information in this article does not constitute the provision of legal advice but rather is general information related to compensatory possibilities for victims of domestic violence. Anyone interested in pursuing any such possibility is urged to consult a qualified attorney regarding her/his particular legal issue or dispute.

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