Many families are about to be evicted. And many will, under duress, sign agreements with landlords' attorneys that amount to a judgment against them (damaging their credit) and promising to pay monthly amounts they cannot afford, throwing them into greater financial crisis. https://twitter.com/DoctorVive/status/1289571822778736641

For a short period of time, as part of an arrangement with my law firm, I worked as a tenant-side attorney with a legal services organization in New York. The stuff that goes on every day in housing court is absolutely wild, very ripe for a great long-form investigative piece.

Tenants are not entitled to an attorney in housing court. Overwhelmingly, the folks in housing court are poor. Large landlords all had attorneys, and they would confer in the hallways with tenants terrified of eviction, sign a stipulation, get it rubber-stamped, and move on.

The tenants often did not fully understand what they were signing, or have any real negotiating power (and didn't know what little negotiating power they did have). LL attorneys were so often rude, condescending, and threatening (and sexually harassing but that's for another day)

It is one of the most unequal exploitative systems I have ever seen in my life. Just unbelievable and inhumane. Tenant side attorneys, mostly from Legal Aid & Legal Services, did their best & truly do the Lord's work, but they were underfunded & overworked & always in crisis mode

Often, the low-income tenants who wound up in housing court were reliant on social services to pay part of the rent, and because of some tiny change their benefits would change, the full rent wouldn't be paid for months, and they'd be surprised by an eviction notice.

Half of my job was calling every other social service organization trying to figure out what had happened (often it was something like, the client worked a few extra hours, which changed her income, which then meant her benefits got cut).

I was a lawyer with all of the sophistication and understanding of how to navigate bureaucracy that supposedly brings, and let me tell you, it was SO DAMN HARD to figure out (a) what had happened, and (b) how to fix it. It took hours and hours and hours, often days and days.

And even when we did figure it out, half the time the client had already gone to court and signed a stipulation with a predatory landlord's lawyer agreeing to pay arrears that she couldn't afford and shouldn't have been on the hook for in the first place.

Sometimes, those stipulations would have any payments going to arrears first instead of to that month's rent first -- making the client perpetually in the red, and accruing more and more debt. Just setting her up to fail. It was so ugly and so cruel.

Overwhelmingly, the folks I represented also had children with serious health problems, ranging from profound disabilities to developmental delays to asthma (the most common). Of course I can't prove this but I sincerely believe environmental toxins poisoned & sickened those kids

Our clients were indigent, and they were dealing with so much beyond just being poor. Poverty animated every aspect of their lives, even their ability to work - you can't keep a job if you're constantly getting dragged to court and taking your chronically ill kid to the hospital.

It is honestly difficult to put into words how impossible the system made it for anyone in it to find basic stability, health, and safety, let alone success. That did not seem to be the point.

And the landlords, btw, were not small mom and pop operations; it wasn't Joe and Sally renting out their starter home or their basement unit. These were largely large-scale landlords, companies unto themselves, that targeted people on Section 8 vouchers & other low-income tenants

The sane and humane thing to do would be to actually coordinate with the social service programs that were often paying all or part of the rent for these tenants. Instead, housing court & the threat of eviction was the go-to.

(Actually the truly sane and humane thing would be sufficient housing that is actually affordable and accessible, but).

Anyway, evictions are going to be a shitshow, but don't think there's no problem if they don't all come in a massive wave. People will make bad agreements to stay put, and they'll pay the price down the road.