- Studies show across the country that tenants who face eviction come out with a favorable outcome 90% of the time if their community has right to counsel.

Right to counsels.

When a community provides a free attorney for tenants facing eviction, typically right to counsel is only guaranteed in criminal trials supporters growing across the country for the practice, but right to counsel is still not available in every city, including Dayton and Cincinnati.

So what impact can Allure make for a tenant facing eviction?

We recently sat down with a day in resident who's seen housing instability and the eviction process firsthand from her experience having a lawyer in the courtroom makes all the difference.

Take a look.

- Ducky ducky, ducky ducky, - Alice Woods, single mother of four takes a routine trip where her kids to feed some ducks not too far from the house, try to - Keep some sort of routine to where it's some kind of normal saying.

As you know, like our housing situation haven't been so, so normal.

- Alice had faced housing security for years and was desperate to find a place to live for her and her family.

In December of 2022, she found a duplex in Dayton and when she tried to use her housing voucher, she ran into some complications - So it didn't pass inspection from the outside.

That meant for me is I couldn't use that voucher.

- So to secure housing, Alice had no other choice.

- I was already living in a hotel and spending, I'm talking like 1500 a month just to stay housed.

They offered me to pay the market price rent until they were able to pass inspection.

I'd rather pay 900 and 1500 and yeah, I took it, - But no major repairs were made and a duplex never passed.

Inspection, - Man, the conditions, where do I start?

I mean I had plumbing issues to where the toilet toilet wouldn't flush, the tub wouldn't drain and the sink wouldn't drain.

I had some electrical issues, I had foundation issues as well.

My front door didn't have a doorknobs, rodents, infestation.

Oh, my basement would flood if it rained too hard because it didn't have alum pump.

Yeah, much, much more.

- I'm curious how the, the kids would describe this space.

Like what, what were those conversations like?

- They call it the bug house.

A lot of questions.

Why do we have this?

Why is this not working?

Or whatever.

I went through they, they went through as well.

Alice - Reached out to the landlord multiple times to make repairs, but they didn't happen.

So she did what all tenants had the ability to do.

She filed for rent escrow.

That's when tenants pay rent into a court held account until the landlord makes needed repairs.

- Before I knew it then came the eviction for nonpayment.

By that time though, I had already paid like two months into the court, so I was confused why they were even able to process an eviction.

- The courts ended up combining her escrow hearing with her eviction hearing.

Initially Alice didn't have representation.

It - Was coming down to the wire to the end where I'm like, okay, I'm not finding, I'm not gonna be able to find any representation, so I need to be as prepared as I can be to go into the courtroom and represent myself.

So that's what I was like, let me look up YouTube and see what I can find on YouTube.

- But YouTube can't take you as far as a lawyer can through the day in Tennis Union, a grassroots group fighting for housing rights, she was able to connect with attorney Sarah Weber from Abel Advocates for basic legal equality.

- She was the answer to my prayer.

Not only is she Obama attorney and she is, she knows that side, but she's here.

She's real and, and she understood what, what I was saying.

She under stood exactly what, what issues I was dealing with and how to, how to go about it.

- What difference does it make having a lawyer in the room representing a tenant versus a tenant who does not have a lawyer in the room.

- It definitely gives the tenant a voice and a certain amount of respect.

When Alice went to her first hearing, it was the second time that the landlord never showed up and you know, and if an attorney, if a tenant doesn't show up, you know, for an eviction, they just grant the case.

They don't continue it.

- Sarah was able to help Alice navigate the court proceedings.

- There was technical issues with who was present because the landlord, the owner is actually an OUTTA state person and they did not come and they sent somebody who, the attorney themselves didn't really know who they were.

The company itself did not register to do business in Ohio, number one.

And so there was no, so I, so there was a lot of objection that way.

- After going through hearings for a couple of months, Sarah was able to get Alice a favorable outcome.

- The eviction was handled first because they dismissed because she wasn't behind in rent.

So escrow, you can request for all the conditions to be fixed.

You can request to be let out of the lease early.

So we had requested that the lease and like she was given 30 days, she was able to stay in the property rent free, have the rent escrow that she had escrowed released back to her and then she moved out in December.

- Do you think it would've been dismissed without Sarah Weber?

- No.

- Why is that?

- I feel like they probably would've came up with a, another excuse or another reason, even though they not allowed, it would've been allowed, you know, if I didn't have my representation.

- If you weren't there, what would've happened to Alice?

- Alice is very good at representing herself, but I mean there are certain things, you know, like the very technical issues would be harder to address.

- Plus a lawyer is able to keep the court accountable and have them adhere to attend this rights.

- Evidence is always being presented by a witness or you know, some sort of documentation.

That's what evidence is.

Evidence isn't what's coming outta my mouth, but there are plenty of courts that just allow the attorney to come in without their client and provide the evidence that way and then evict these tenants.

- In a place like Montgomery County, we saw nearly 40% increase in eviction filing since the height of the pandemic.

Adding rights to counsel to tenant's rights would make a difference.

Debra Lavy is a senior attorney at Able, she shares what a right to council program would do for Dayton.

- I think it was back in 2023, the filing rates.

There were some studies done about filing rates across the country and Dayton had the fifth highest eviction filing rate in the state.

So yeah, there's a lot of cases, but what we do see when there are effective right to counsel programs is we see the filings going down - And with filings going down, there may be more stable households allowing tenants to focus on what really matters.

- We are talking about why tenant protections is, is so important and that's because it allows people to, to stay in one area to, to even be able to build a sense of community.

- In my conversations with attorneys at Abel, Deborah Lavy and Sarah Weber, they said Right to counsel would not only help tenants but save money.

Cleveland is another city with Right to Counsel.

They invest three and a half million dollars for their program.

According to evaluators, they're getting a 12 to $14 million benefit, which is a 300 to 400% return on investment for the city.

They is aiming to launch its own pilot program of Right to Counsel this year.

Of course, we'll keep an eye on it and share its rollout and outcomes as we go forward.

For Brick By Brick, I'm Hearns Legger, Jr.