Posted on 12/27/2019 7:28:06 PM PST by karpov
Half-a-dozen cities from San Francisco to Cleveland are promising tenants the right to an attorney in eviction cases, a costly and logistically daunting initiative that advocates say is a necessary response to rising housing costs and homelessness.
If successful, proponents say these programs could provide a bulwark against gentrification and homelessness, and end up saving cities money by reducing the number of families who end up on the streets and in shelters.
Implementing such a sweeping new right poses challenges. It requires staffing legal aid offices with dozens of new attorneys, finding space in courtrooms for lawyers to meet with their clients, and slowing the rapid-fire pace of housing court to allow lawyers to file motions in defense of their clients.
The Supreme Court granted defendants a right to an attorney in criminal cases in state court in 1963, but efforts to guarantee defendants the right to counsel in civil cases have been much more patchwork.
Most of the cities involved, including Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., and Santa Monica, Calif., passed legislation in the past year, so it is early to judge how they have fared.
New York was the first city to guarantee tenants the right to counsel, rolling out the program by zip code starting about two years ago. Early results suggest both that the program is working in driving down evictions and also that it has been tough to implement.
From 2017 to 2018, evictions declined five times faster in zip codes where tenants have a right to counsel, compared to similar ones where they don’t, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Community Service Society.
The infusion of lawyers into a system, where historically most landlords were represented, compared to about 1% of tenants, has strained the courts
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The one and only cause of rising prices is that supply isn’t keeping up with demand.
With respect to housing, this means that new housing isn’t being built.
And that means that government regulation, both in construction codes, permitting, and zoning, is preventing new construction.
It depends on the landlord’s grievance process. Found out my mine was rigged.
My appeal is still pending.
Here is how it is defined on Bing: "gentrifications (plural noun) the process of renovating and improving housing or a district so that it conforms to middle-class taste. "an area undergoing rapid gentrification" the process of making someone or somethng more refined, polite, or respectable."
Some thoughts.......
What the world needs now
Is lawyers, more lawyers.
...
Allow landlords some of their previous rights they used to have on the front end. Nobody has the stomach for that. Might get called a mean name.
Its called due process. You never know when you need to be heard by a court.
Any given region has a natural carrying capacity. Large cities have reached it. Humans need a practical (and near intolerable) minimum of about 100 sq ft each. Architecture, geography, & physics dictate how packed people & infrastructure can be. Zoning laws reflect what overall populace tolerance for extremes are. All this works out to local carrying capacity.
And when demand exceeds a hard limit on capacity (supply), value practically heads toward infinite: considering 7.5B people on the planet, there’s always someone willing to pay more for any given property.
No amount of cleverness will resolve the issue of rising urban real estate prices. If you can’t afford to compete, you need to move.
The government artificially suppressing rents only aggravates the housing shortage: simple Economics 101.
Except for those of us who get annual rent increases, that’s more about inflation.
Plank #1 of the Communist Manifesto: Abolition of private property rights
....Said no one, ever!
Question: how many of the thousands of homeless are here illegally ?
“That term “gentrification,” is troubling.”
—
“they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”.
Question: how many of the thousands of homeless are here illegally ?
What concerns me more is that low income housing is being given to illegals and OUR CITIZENS are on the streets, illegals should NOT qualify for low income housing OR vouchers for housing PERIOD!!!!
On a few occasions I had opportunities to purchase rental properties. I researched each opportunity thoroughly. In every instance I discovered Gov’t Interference as the primary reason each owner was looking to sell.
Why anyone would take on this business in any demographic except the upper class of renters is beyond me. Renting to low and middle income earners is not worth the time and effort for the return on investment.
“they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”.
Big Yellow Taxi lyrics
Joni Mitchell
Neighborhood 1970
And how many homeless are displaced from housing by those here illegally? I wonder if kicking a few million uninvited guests out might free up some housing.
This will force landlords to raise rents even more to cover their costs of litigation.
The people who actually pay the rents on time will be the ones who end up paying for the ones who do not.
Think of it as reparations in action.
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