Housing Law Commons^™

Expanding The Right To Counsel In Eviction Cases: Arguments For And Limitations Of "Civil Gideon" Laws In A Post-Covid 19 World, Jennifer S. Prusak

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

With the cost of housing rising nationwide and incomes largely failing to keep pace with this increase, the United States is in the midst of interrelated affordable housing and eviction crises. The housing affordability metric that has long been the bedrock of American housing policy is that households should spend no more than thirty percent of their income on housing. This is no longer an attainable goal for many Americans. By 2017, forty-eight percent of renter households were “rent burdened”—they paid more than thirty percent of their income in rent. Over a quarter of American renters, or 11 million …