Last week, lawyers and advocates presented the findings of an eviction diversion pilot program launched by the Vernon-Rockville Superior Court before the Connecticut Justice Commission’s Legal Aid Committee.
“It’s hard, I think, to be able to describe the eviction process as really positive in any sense,” said Justice William H. Bright Jr., Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. “It is inherently destructive, I think, to both parties. The only question that we can decide is either the landlord gets possession or the tenant gets possession, if it goes to trial. And that is almost never a solution to the underlying problem.”
The program was funded by a $50,000 grant from the Connecticut Bar Foundation, and provided assistance to 72 tenants from March to October. Sean Eaton-Robb, of Connecticut Legal Services, said he and other lawyers and staff members and lawyers from Connecticut Legal Services and Greater Hartford Legal Aid would go each Friday to the Vernon-Rockville Court and “just let people come in and ask us questions.”
Eaton-Robb and his peers provided tenants with free legal advice and representation, and if tenants were eligible, the program also offered up to $2,000 in rental assistance.
“We have to be confident that this money is going to be able to help you stay in your apartment, whether that means taking care of the entirety of the arrearage, or if your income is high enough that with the assistance, whatever you’re left paying on an arrearage program, is going to be something that you can afford going forward,” said Eaton-Robb.
85% of the tenants who received assistance through the program made less than 200% of the federal poverty level. Every one of the 16 tenants who received rental assistance remains in their apartments, said Eaton-Robb. There were several reasons why tenants may not have received money; the most common was that tenants failed to follow up, while other tenants owed too much or faced evictions where non-payment was not a factor.
“We still have about half the funds remaining,” said Eaton-Robb. “We’re hoping to use those throughout the course of the winter.”
Eaton-Robb said that “around 95% of our cases” ended in settlements between the landlord and tenant, with the two most common outcomes being an agreed upon eviction date, or an agreement to stay “subject to conditions, often a payment plan.” Evictions were the most common result, but Eaton-Robb said that having an attorney often allowed tenants to “negotiate a better agreement.”
“Whether that means more time, more favorable conditions, whatever it is, a lawyer might be able to help you get those written down in the agreement that an unrepresented tenant may not be aware they have the right to ask for,” said Eaton-Robb.
Despite the pilot program’s results, Samira Nazem of the National Center for State Courts, which has helped fund and implement approximately 31 diversion programs across the country, said they are “incredibly effective at reducing eviction judgments.”
“Across all the programs we’ve worked with, 90% of the cases on a diversion track are resolved without a judgment [eviction],” said Nazem. “I think that is a very powerful indicator that programs that are embedded within the court system are not too late to change the trajectory of a case and lead to a better outcome.”
In cases where tenants are evicted, Nazem said the programs still allow the tenants to “do so with dignity” by connecting them to different housing assistance resources and allowing them to “move out on their own terms in a much more sustainable way,” that creates “less disruption for the family.” Nazem said that tenants and landlords both have reported “much higher levels of satisfaction” in resolving cases in courts with eviction programs than in national studies.
“We see higher rates of feeling that they were heard, that they got the information that they needed, that they got the resolution they wanted, and so that is a really powerful indicator that these programs can really transform how people connect with our courts, how they experience courts, and kind of what they take away from that process,” said Nazem.
Dr. Annie Harper, a cultural anthropologist at the Yale School of Medicine, shared the findings of research conducted by her and another Yale colleague, Danya Keene, following the implementation of Connecticut’s Right to Counsel program, a similar legal assistance program for low-income tenants that launched in 2022. The two interviewed “40 or 50 tenants” and found the three most commonly cited benefits were the ability to be connected to housing resources, the ability to receive a little more time to plan before being evicted, and a sense of security in the feeling that they were not alone.
Harper said she planned to conduct similar qualitative research on the Vernon-Rockville pilot program and shared the stories of a handful of former pilot clients whom Jane Kelleher of Connecticut Legal Services had worked with. One of the clients was a hoarder, who did not need financial assistance and was able to remain after being connected with services to help her clean up and better maintain the apartment.
“She was given several weeks to attend therapy, [and] connected with people who could help her with the clean-up,” said Harper. “So that’s the resource connection part, and she was able to stay in her home and still is.”
Another woman had schizophrenia and was unable to pay rent after her father, whom she lived with and who used to cover the rent, died. Attorneys secured her the time needed to reach out to her brother in Florida and arrange to move in with him, “without having to have a period of time unhoused.” Another couple was unable to cover the $1,500 in late fees that they had accumulated after having to pay unexpected medical expenses for their daughter.
“This was a perfect case where the $2,000 canceled that out, and it was good,” said Harper.
One of Harper’s takeaways was the fact that in the majority of the stories she heard, tenants had suffered from health issues.
“I think in almost every one of the nine or ten stories, the lead-up to the eviction was rooted in a health problem,” said Harper. “As a health researcher, we’ve often been looking at how eviction causes health problems, but I don’t think we’ve looked enough at how it’s health problems that are actually leading to eviction. So that’s another thing that I think we need to look into.’
Without a clear source of future funding, Eaton-Robb said the direction of the program remains uncertain. If funding is secured, however, he wondered, “what’s expansion look like?” Justice Bright said he’s explored adding social workers to the program and is open to input on how to do that.
“I think of this in many ways as that childhood game of Jenga, where you build the tower and it requires all the pieces to be in place,” said Bright. “And when folks end up in housing court, many of those pieces have been pulled out piece by piece over time, and if we’re going to put those pieces back, the work that is being done currently is a significant part of that.”
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