Page 31 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

The Price of Equal Justice:
How Establishing a Right to Counsel for People Who Face Losing Their Homes Helps Tackle Economic Inequality
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Andrew Scherer1
New York City is at the epicenter of the astoundingly large and growing divide between rich and poor in the United States . This wealth gap is a source of major concern, and the current city administration has, with good reason, made tackling economic inequality one of its primary policy objectives . One particularly troublesome result of disparity in wealth is disparity in access to justice . The equation is simple: no money, no counsel;2 no counsel, no access to justice . This essay argues that the City is well-positioned to guarantee a right to counsel for low-income households that face losing their homes in legal proceedings and that, among other compelling reasons to do so, establishing the right to counsel will significantly further the administration’s goal of tackling economic inequality .
The New York City Council and the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio are considering adopting legislation that would make New York City the first jurisdiction in the United States to guarantee a right to counsel for low-income people who cannot afford legal help and who face loss of their homes in eviction and foreclosure proceedings .3 For many reasons, it would be sound social and fiscal policy for the City to establish this right . The right to counsel would protect affordable housing and stabilize low-income families and communities . The right to counsel would stem the tide and rising costs of homelessness . And the right to counsel would vindicate the important constitutional rights of due process and equal protection . These and other arguments have been addressed at length elsewhere .4 However, the literature on the right to counsel has not yet addressed the relationship of the right to counsel to income inequality and wealth-based access to justice .
Establishing the right to counsel in eviction and foreclosure cases will help ameliorate economic inequality, both concretely and symbolically . It will greatly enhance people’s ability to avoid
1 Policy Director, Impact Center for Public Interest Law at New York Law School, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor, New York Law School.
2 Or, at best, people without money have severely limited access to counsel through free legal assistance programs.
3 See Intro. 214 (City of New York 2014), available at http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail. aspx?ID=1687978&GUID=29A4594B-9E8A-4C5E-A797-96BDC4F64F80&Options=ID. The Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, a citywide coalition of housing and other advocacy groups, academic institutions, legal services providers and others, was formed in 2014 to advocate for a right to counsel for households facing eviction in NYC and has been actively supporting the legislation.
4 See, e.g., Panel Discussion: International, National, and Local Perspectives on Civil Right to Counsel, An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State, 25 Touro l. rev. 81 (2009); Raymond Brescia, Sheltering Counsel: Toward a Right to a Lawyer in Eviction Proceedings, 25 Touro l. rev. 187 (2009); and other articles in the same volume, available at http://www.tourolaw.edu/LawReview/uploads/ pdfs/_7_WWW_PanelDiscussion_SM_Final_12.23.08_.pdf; Andrew Scherer, The Importance of Collaborating to Secure a Civil Right to Counsel, 30 n.y.u. rev. l. & soc. change 675 (2006), available at http://courts.state. ny.us/ip/partnersinjustice/right-to-counsel-collaboration.pdf. The National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel also maintains a comprehensive bibliography on the civil right to counsel. Civil Right to Counsel Bibliographies, Nat’l Coal. for a Civil Right to Counsel, http://civilrighttocounsel.org/resources/bibliography (last visited June 5, 2015).
Housing and Community