NYC Council infuriated by Adams admin’s refusal to back housing court slowdown amid ‘Right to Counsel’ crisis

A top attorney in Mayor Adams’ administration faced waves of criticism from City Council members Monday after refusing to offer support for a bill that would slow down housing court proceedings amid a recent uptick in New Yorkers going without legal representation in eviction cases.

Under the city’s “Right to Counsel” law, tenants facing eviction in the five boroughs are supposed to be guaranteed free legal representation in housing court. The free representation is typically provided by public defender groups contracted by the city government.

But a confluence of factors — including public defender staffing shortages and a surge in eviction filings — has resulted in thousands of tenants appearing in court without representation because there aren’t enough attorneys to meet the demand.

Against that backdrop, Manhattan Councilman Shaun Abreu introduced a resolution last month calling on the state Legislature to pass a bill that’d require courts to pause any eviction case in which a tenant can’t secure representation. Under the bill, a case could only resume once an attorney is assigned to represent the tenant.

In a Council oversight hearing Monday morning, Abreu asked city Department of Social Services lawyer Raniece Medley, whose Office of Civil Justice oversees the Right to Counsel program, to commit support for his resolution on behalf of Adams’ administration.

But Medley declined to, only saying the resolution remains “under review” by Adams’ team. Medley also said she could not provide data on how many tenants are currently in eviction proceedings without attorneys, but vowed that the administration remains committed to providing “universal access” to legal representation in housing court.

Medley’s dodge infuriated Abreu, who noted that the administration has had over a month to review his measure since he introduced it Feb. 16.

“I feel gaslit,” Abreu, a Democrat, told Medley. “We should not shy away from the fact that there is a crisis right now, and that there is a demand that is not being met.”

Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Progressive Caucus, said he shares Abreu’s “extreme frustration” and asked Medley again if the administration believes an eviction case should move forward even if a tenant doesn’t have a lawyer.

“The administration is not prepared to answer that,” she replied.

Restler said Medley’s demurral made her “complicit” in what he described as the Adams administration’s exacerbation of the city’s homelessness crisis.

“I am very disappointed by the lack of information today, and I feel like City Hall sent over sacrificial lambs to get beat up,” he told Medley and two of her deputies who also testified at the hearing. “Failing to take hard positions on critical issues [is] causing and driving homelessness … This was very disappointing.”

Pressure on Right to Counsel providers started to build in January 2022, when the state’s pandemic-era eviction moratorium expired, prompting hundreds of landlords in the city to file a torrent of eviction claims at the same time.

Though Medley did not share up-to-date data, the state Office of Court Administration released statistics earlier this year showing that Right to Counsel attorneys had to decline to represent more than 10,000 eviction defendants in the city between March 2022 and this past January due to overbearing workloads. Another 12,000 defendants only received “limited” representation in the same time frame, according to the data.

As first reported by the Daily News last week, the city’s six major public defender groups are urging the mayor and the Council to increase their funding levels by at least $425 million in this year’s city budget so that they can staff up to meet the demand for Right to Counsel representation.

The funding boost request came after Adams’ first budget proposal kept city spending on public defender groups effectively flat.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, a former Council member who co-authored the bill that first established Right to Counsel in the city in 2017, testified at Monday’s hearing that the real life implications of tenants going without legal representation in housing court are dire.

Pointing to data that shows 86% of tenants who receive representation are able to stay in their homes, Levine said protecting Right to Counsel must be “a key component of our strategy to combat homelessness.”

“We need the administration on record to support this,” the borough president added.