Housing Court- Brooklyn Style

Like all law centre solicitors, I have spent many long hours in the heritable court at Glasgow Sheriff Court, where eviction actions against tenants are dealt with.   In Glasgow these cases call on a Tuesday, with new cases calling at 2pm and continued cases calling at 10am.  The court sometimes runs until 6pm and at times, it can be an exercise in patience and stamina.  But the next time you are driven to distraction waiting three hours for your one contentious case, spare a thought for housing attorneys in New York. 

I went along to court with one of the attorneys from South Brooklyn Legal Services and learned that in Brooklyn, there are four "resolution" courts, running every day, with three callings a day, for residential landlord matters.  There is also a night court one day a week for unrepresented landlords, who usually own a fewer numbers of properties.  That's sixty one courts a week! 

I only had time to observe a couple of cases heard by Judge Mark Finklestein.   Apparently he is one of the most pro-tenant judges, but that was not obvious to me!  As I entered the court he was shouting at the defense attorney.  She was trying to persuade Judge Finklestein  to deal with an issue regarding outstanding repairs in an arrears action - she argued it was an issue of law rather than an factual dispute, but he was having none of it.  Judge Finklestein said that a mere statement in the papers did not prove repairs were required, so he would have to fix a trial hearing (proof). 

 

The agent held her own, but seemed shaken- I felt the Judge was pretty rude, raising his voice and rolling his eyes at her (in fairness to the Judge, I did miss the first few minutes of their exchange).  He seemed to mellow slightly whilst fixing the trial diet, saying it was perfectly reasonable for these arguments to be raised at trial, and that she may well be successful.

The court was packed with clients, as they attend procedural callings with their agents.  The heritable court in Glasgow routinely hears around 200 cases a calling so it would not be possible for every client to attend.

The court seemed to be less formal than in Scotland- there were filing cabinets holding files on show and a clerk working on a computer- I think the room effectively functions as the civil clerk's office too. Throughout the court, there was background talking and people coming in and out.  One thing I found unusual was the big sign behind the judge saying "In God We Trust". 

I will be going along to the housing court in Manhattan so I'll keep you posted!

Access to Civil Justice Hearings held in NYC

The following is an excerpt from an article by Joel Stashenko, published in the New York Legal Journal on 13th October 2010

Hearing Evidence Highlights Shortfall in Funding of Legal Services for the Poor

A series of court-sponsored hearings completed last week disclosed dramatic evidence of a massive shortfall in spending to provide needed civil legal services for millions of poor New Yorkers- evidence the organizers hope to use in building support for their efforts to close the gap.

According to preliminary figures released by the courts’ recently created Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York, the state spent only $3.68 last year for each of its low income residents to finance legal services, compared to an average of $23.51 for the neighboring states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont. 

Victor A. Kovner, chairman of the Fund for Modern Courts, testified at one hearing that a survey conducted for the court system found that low income tenants residents had been forced to go without lawyers in confronting housing, finances, domestic relations, health insurance, immigration and other issues.

Extrapolating from the survey’s sample, Mr. Kovner estimated that almost 3 million low-income New Yorkers faced at least one legal problem last year without representation and that 1.2 million had three or more matters without access to counsel.

“Staggering numbers” responded Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, who presided over all the hearings, one in each of the Appellate Division’s four departments.  “It is startling and it is also an enormous burden, not simply to those families but to all sorts of institutions throughout the state,” Mr. Kovner said.

The task force reported that civil legal representation for the poor last year provided        $603.5 million in economic benefits and savings.  For example, it estimated that poor New Yorkers with attorneys received $320.7 million through federal programs such as Social Security Disability and that nearly $100 million was saved by avoiding emergency shelter costs for people whose provided legal counsel were able to successfully fight eviction or foreclosure.

Judge Lipman said in an interview after the hearings that the state cannot hope to make up the huge shortfall revealed by the hearings all at once, but he vowed that the Judiciary’s proposed 2011-12 budget will initiate the process.  “We recognize whatever the unmet needs are, it can’t be met in one year,” Judge Lippman said.  “It’s got to be over a four-to-five year period”.

He said the task force will now combine data and anecdotal evidenced form the hearings as well as research it has been doing since late spring to define the problem and to make proposals for more reliable funding.

The cost to the state from inadequate legal services “is ultimately many times over the investment that should be made to fund legal services adequately”, Judge Lippman said.  

The task force and the public hearings were Judge Lippman’s response to a joint resolution (J6368/K1621) approved earlier this year by each chamber of the Legislature.  It asked the Judiciary for an updated, accurate accounting of the needs of civil legal aid services for the poor and how many people are not getting representation in civil matters (NYLJ, Sept. 29).

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Sampson and Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Helene Weinstein attended the final hearing by Judge Lippman’s panel in Brooklyn on Oct 7^th.  In addition to Judge Lippman, Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau, the four presiding justices of the Appellate Divisions and Stephen P. Younger, president of the New York State Bar Association, presided over the hearings.

Unlike criminal legal services, which are compulsory for indigent defendants under the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 ruling in Gideon v Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, poor parties in civil cases are not guaranteed representation.  Judge Lippman said it was his goal to create a “Civil Gideon” in New York in the coming years.

Civil legal services are funded through some state and federal aid, grants by institutions, grants by individual legislators and the Interest on Lawyers’ Account fund.  Because of the sour economy, IOLA funding to legal services providers has plunged from $32 million in 2008 to about $7 million in 2010 and 2011.  The governor and Legislature applied some $15 million in higher fees and other court-related costs to fill some of the IOLA funding gap this year, but the money is not guaranteed to go to civil legal services again in the 2011-12 budget.

Useful links

Transcripts from the hearings can be found here: http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/access-civil-legal-services/public-hearings.shtml

Gideon v Wainwright on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright

HIV/AIDS patients battle City bureaucracy

I've attached linkes to two recent news articles about the delays HIV/AIDS sufferers face accessing the benefits they are entitled to.  The organsation under attack? HASA- the HIV/AIDS Services Administration.

The first article tells the story of Annelle Herring, facing eviction and attending housing court on her own.

"Despite her success in court, Herring, who pays 54 percent of her income in rent, said she will continue to struggle to make ends meet."

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4200/aids-patients-battle-city-bureaucracy/2

The second article describes "chronic delays in access to housing and an increasing number of HIV-positive New Yorkers stacked up in Single Room Occupancy units rather than living in long-term housing."

http://www.housingworks.org/blogs/detail/report-reveals-incomplete-picture-of-hasa/

“Tenants winning” on the West Side

On 25^th September I went along to the 6^th Annual West Side Tenants Conference. 

The daylong Conference was attended by around 200 tenants living in the areas of Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen and the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  When welcoming their first speaker of the day, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, I was surprised to hear the audience cheering, whooping and shouting “bravo”.  Coming from a background of attending community meetings in Govanhill, this was new for me.

"It seems like the deck is always stacked against tenants...but actually we are winning a lot of fights".

President Stringer talked of a major victory- community activists and politicians had campaigned and successfully passed state legislation to ban illegal hotels. He explained that there was a severe shortage of housing in New York.  Currently tens of thousands of rent regulated apartments are being let to tourists for very short term stays, so the apartments are effectively being “stolen” from New Yorkers who needed somewhere to live.   
 

He said “we tend to come to meetings and bemoan; it seems like the deck is always stacked against tenants”.  He continued “tenants feel like they are on the edge of being thrown out of the great city they helped to build, but actually we are winning a lot of the fights.” 

“Not having solution will not be acceptable”.

State Senator Liz Krueger also received a warm welcome.  She said it had been “a better year than we’ve had for a long time for affordable housing and tenant led actions” but that more had to be done.  She explained that she had been involved in the campaign to ban illegal hotels for the past five years, during which time the problem had gotten worse, spreading from Manhattan to Brooklyn then Queens.

She said that they knew the legislative solution would be technically complicated – they came up with numerous ideas and it was a process of elimination, but importantly they didn’t give up as “not having solution will not be acceptable”.     Elected representatives had to be educated about the effect illegal hotels had on communities.  She said that to get Major Bloomberg on board, they had to educate him and his people because some of them didn’t think a problem existed.

She went on to describe the opposition they faced passing the bill.   Many pro-landlord lobbyists tried to persuade legislators not to pass the bill.  She described how the landlords had organized “rapidly and aggressively”, giving one example of a press conference, where landlords had bussed people in from afar,  the protesters screaming that that the bill would kill jobs.   The campaigners had to explain that the bill would not affect legitimate hotels in the slightest.  The bill will come into force in May 2011 and Senator Krueger urged tenants to start getting their complaints ready now. 

She ended by saying that in her opinion, “the biggest problem we have is the LLC loophole”, where limited liability corporations are allowed to donate huge amounts of money to elected representatives.  She said that one landlord LLC had donated $950,000 to 27 elected representatives (each!), showing the impact of money in the NY State Senate. 

“What difference does it make?  The landlord will get a couple of dollars fine and nothing will change”.

Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, co-sponsor of the bill, was the final speaker of the morning and described the legislation as “one of the most important bills for tenants for the past 20 years”.   He said that it took elected representatives a while to figure out what the issue was all about.   He said that voluntary organizations had carried out extraordinary research to document where illegal hotel units were located, proving it was a citywide problem.   Through this research, the campaign uncovered evidence that illegal hotels were a big problem in the constituency of Vito Lopez, head of the Housing Committee.   The campaigners then started organizing people in his area, getting residents to raise the issue with him.  He said that tenants groups from all over the city had attended rallies, and raised issue with their own elected reps. 

He said it took a year or two to figure out how to engage and get answers and this period was very frustrating.  He said officials were passing concerns from department to department, and that several times he heard comments like “what difference does it make?  The landlord will get a couple of dollars fine and nothing will change”.

Lessons to learn?

I found the speeches really inspiring, and saw lots of parallels with housing campaigns in Govanhill.  The frustration in speaking to authorities also rang true- but in Glasgow the landlord doesn't even get a fine!  In the illegal hotels campaign, they spent a lot of time educating and persuading elected officials and their staff, whilst at the same time galvanizing action from different areas of the city.   It seemed like the campaigners found sympathetic elected representatives who were also willing to take the fight forward- how can we do this back home?    I thought their tactical decision to use evidence to target the Head of the Housing Committee was pretty smart too.  The residents here are winning some key successes- hopefully this will give inspiration to the good people of G42 in their battle against slum landlords.

Hi and welcome!

Thanks for visiting my new blog!  I think I should start by introducing myself and explain why I am sharing my New York experiences on the web...

I am a lawyer (solicitor) and have been practicing in Glasgow for the past six years.  I work for Govan Law Centre, an amazing organization that gives free advice and representation to residents in South West Glasgow, as well as campaigning for law reform.  We opened a branch office in the South East of Glasgow in November 2008, called Govanhill Law Centre, to address the lack of free legal advice on topics such as housing and employment law.  See www.govanhilllc.com for further details. 

Govanhill residents find themselves at the sharp end of many unlawful practices, from rogue landlords unlawfully evicting tenants on a whim or failing to carry out repairs, to newly arrived migrants not receiving the minimum wage.  On the face of it, politicians are committed to addressing these problems, but on the ground residents, myself included, have yet to see any real change.  What I find incredible and inspiring about Govanhill is the number of residents who are committed to improving the area and fighting for change. 

I am taking a period of unpaid leave from the Law Centre, and I am living temporarily in Brooklyn, New York.  I have been working as a part time volunteer at South Brooklyn Legal Services, for their HIV Project – see http://www.sbls.org/index.php?id=15 .

The aim of this blog is to share information and idea on the following topics:

1.      Access to justice- what barriers do New Yorkers face enforcing their housing, employment and other civil rights and how do these barriers compare with problems we face in Scotland?

2.      Tenant led campaigns- how have tenants organized and campaigned here?  What can we learn and apply to our fights in Govanhill?

I will also post links to relevant stories in the media here.

I hope you find this blog interesting- please feel free to post your comments and thoughts here too.