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Eviction Protection Grant Program

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Eviction Protection Grant Program


In 2021, HUD launched the Eviction Protection Grant Program (EPGP), a first-of-its-kind federal program designed to expand the reach of legal services to low-income tenants at risk of, or subject to, eviction. Millions of families face eviction each year, whether through formal court processes or through extra-legal evictions. Evicted tenants, especially children, face significant long-term consequences. Yet, most tenants do not have access to legal assistance that may help them reach more mutually beneficial resolutions with landlords or defend against illegal evictions. The Eviction Protection Grant Program aims to help fill this gap. With the infusion of a second round of funding in Fiscal Year 2022, HUD currently funds a total of 21 EPGP grantees providing no-cost legal assistance to prevent or divert eviction and mitigate the consequences of eviction across 19 states. Through this demonstration program, PD&R seeks to expand the evidence base around eviction diversion programming as local, state, and federal policymakers consider new ways to support tenants and landlords and build new eviction systems and processes.

As of March 31, 2024, grantees have provided legal assistance to over 35,000 households through the program, representing a rapid scale-up to meet tenant needs. Grantees provided legal assistance to over 5,000 households during the first year of implementation in Fiscal Year 2022. In Fiscal Year 2023, grantees expanded the reach of the program by over nearly 250%, serving over 19,000 households. The majority of tenants served are people of color and nearly half are from Black households. All tenants served by the program are low-income, and nearly 2 in 3 tenants served have extremely low incomes. These are often folks living below the poverty line. The program continues to grow in impact as grantees expand their programs.



overview icon  Overview

In FY 2021, PD&R launched the Eviction Protection Grant Program as part of HUD’s continued work, and broader whole-of-government approach, to support families recovering from the public health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first of its kind for the Department, the Eviction Protection Grant Program funds experienced legal service organizations providing legal assistance at no cost to low-income tenants at risk of, or subject to, eviction. With rising rents, record inflation, and economic uncertainty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, these services come at a critical time for families across the country and offer a unique demonstration opportunity for the Department and broader eviction diversion initiatives. PD&R announced inaugural awards to 10 legal service providers totaling $20 million in November 2021 and quickly expanded the program to an additional 11 grantees in May 2022 with another $20 million in FY 2022 funds.


Program Objectives icon  Program Objectives

The objectives and priorities of this program include but are not limited to:

  1. Distributing federal financial support to nonprofit and governmental entities to provide legal assistance, at no cost, to low-income renters facing eviction or at risk of eviction in areas with high rates of evictions or risk of evictions.
  2. Providing eviction protection services to historically underserved populations, including people of color, persons with limited English proficiency, and persons with disabilities.
  3. Ensuring a proportionate distribution of funding amounts for rural areas, including Tribal lands, to the extent possible.
  4. Building the evidence base for the activities most effective at preventing evictions and/or mitigating negative outcomes that result from evictions.

Program Services and Beneficiaries icon  Program Services and Beneficiaries

EPGP grantees provide a variety of legal services to low-income tenants facing eviction, including:

  • education and outreach and “know your rights” campaigns
  • legal information hotlines and legal advice
  • housing court navigation
  • legal representation (including in landlord negotiation/mediation)
  • mass eviction response and prevention
  • fair housing defense related to eviction
  • service provider referrals and benefits assistance
  • self-help technology like online form builders for responding to eviction notices
  • collaboration with courts, judges, and others to create and promote eviction diversion programs

Beneficiaries served by the program must meet all three of the following criteria: (1) be a tenant, (2) be low-income, and (3) be at risk of or subject to eviction.


Grant Recipients

The program’s 21 grantees are serving tenants in 19 states, implementing a total of 11 statewide eviction protection programs as well as 12 local and regional programs. The grantees are:


Location

Grantee

Funded Partners

Service Area

San Bernardino, CA Legal Aid Society of San Bernardino San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, CA
Hartford, CT Connecticut Fair Housing Center
  • Connecticut Bar Foundation
  • Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, Inc.
  • Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut (LSC)
  • University of Connecticut Law School
Connecticut Statewide
Jacksonville, FL Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, Inc.
  • Florida Legal Services, Inc.
  • Gulfcoast Legal Services, Inc.
  • Legal Aid Service of Broward
  • Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, Inc.
  • Northwest Florida Legal Services, Inc.
Florida Statewide
Miami, FL Legal Services of Greater Miami (LSC)
  • Community Justice Project, Inc.
Miami-Dade County, FL

Atlanta, GA Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation Fulton County, GA
Boise, ID Idaho Legal Aid Services (LSC)

Idaho:

  • Boise State University
  • Intermountain Fair Housing Council, Inc.
  • The Jesse Tree of Idaho, Inc.

Montana:

  • Montana Legal Services Assoc. (LSC)

Utah:

  • Utah Legal Services, Inc. (LSC)
Idaho Statewide, Montana Statewide, and Utah Statewide
Lafayette, LA Acadiana Legal Service Corporation (LSC)
  • Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Corporation (LSC)
Louisiana Statewide
Worcester, MA Community Legal Aid (LSC)
  • Greater Boston Legal Services
  • MetroWest Legal Services
  • Northeast Legal Aid (LSC)
  • South Coastal Communities Legal Services (LSC)
Massachusetts Statewide
Portland, ME Pine Tree Legal Assistance (LSC) Maine Statewide
St. Louis, MO Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSC)
  • Legal Aid of Western Missouri (LSC)
  • Legal Services of Southern Missouri (LSC)
  • Mid Missouri Legal Services Corporation (LSC)
  • Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council (EHOC)
Missouri Statewide
Edison, NJ Legal Services of New Jersey
  • South Jersey Legal Services (LSC)
  • Legal Services of Northwest Jersey (LSC)
  • Northeast New Jersey Legal Services (LSC)
  • Central Jersey Legal Services (LSC)
  • Essex-Newark Legal Services
New Jersey Statewide
Las Vegas, NV Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada Clark County, NV
Albany, NY Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LSC) Cities of Albany and Amsterdam, NY
Geneva, NY Legal Assistance of Western New York (LSC)
  • Legal Aid Society of Rochester
  • JustCause
14 counties in Western New York:
  • Allegany County
  • Cattaraugus County
  • Chautauqua County
  • Chemung County
  • Livingston County
  • Monroe County
  • Ontario County
  • Schuyler County
  • Seneca County
  • Steuben County
  • Tioga County
  • Tompkins County
  • Wayne County
  • Yates County
New York, NY Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation
  • TakeRoot Justice
  • Community Action for Safe Apartments
  • Metropolitan Council on Housing
  • Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Inc.
Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, NY
White Plains, NY Legal Services of the Hudson Valley (LSC)
  • Community Voices Heard, Inc.
  • Hudson Valley Justice Center, Inc.
Dutchess County, NY
Toledo, OH Advocates For Basic Legal Equality
  • Legal Aid of Western Ohio (LSC)
7 counties in Northwestern Ohio:
  • Allen County
  • Auglaize County
  • Champaign County
  • Clark County
  • Logan County
  • Mercer County
  • Miami County
Oklahoma City, OK Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma (LSC)
  • Fox Strategies
16 counties in Northeastern Oklahoma:
  • Adair County
  • Cherokee County
  • Craig County
  • Creek County
  • Delaware County
  • Mayes County
  • Muskogee County
  • Nowata County
  • Okmulgee County
  • Osage County
  • Ottawa County
  • Rogers County
  • Sequoyah County
  • Tulsa County
  • Wagoner County
  • Washington County
Charleston, SC One-Eighty Place
  • Charleston Pro Bono Legal Services, Inc.

  • Charleston Legal Access
  • SC Thrive
  • South Carolina Legal Services (LSC)
4 counties covering Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina:
  • Charleston County
  • Dorchester County
  • Lexington County
  • Richland County
Jackson, TN West Tennessee Legal Services Incorporated (LSC)
  • Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LSC)
  • Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands (LSC)
  • Memphis Area Legal Services, Inc. (LSC)
Tennessee Statewide
San Antonio, TX San Antonio, TX
  • St. Mary’s School of Law’s Center for Legal & Social Justice
  • Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (LSC)
Bexar County, TX

Notice of Funding Opportunity

FY 2023/2024 Eviction Protection Grant Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)



FY 2021/2022 NOFO and Terms and Conditions


Policy Guidance Memoranda


Training and Assistance


Current Information Collection Forms


New and Revised Information Collection Forms

HUD has proposed the following new and revised information collection forms for the Eviction Protection Grant Program.


HUD Research


White House Eviction Summit


Eviction Data


Trauma-Informed Services


FY 2023/2024 NOFO

The FY 2023/2024 Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Eviction Protection Grant Program is closed.

Applications were due August 20, 2024 and are being reviewed.

FY 2023/2024 NOFO
Frequently Asked Questions (updated August 9, 2024)

Optional application templates:


What is eviction?

Eviction is a broad term that captures a variety of processes and means by which landlords remove tenants from their rental properties. Researchers, policymakers, and advocates have identified various types of eviction: court-ordered, extra-legal, and administrative. All three types of eviction are covered by this program’s definitions.

  • Court-ordered evictions (also called formal or lawful evictions) include all eviction actions that take place through the legal system. The term covers both eviction filings and court-ordered eviction rulings.
  • Extra-legal evictions (also called illegal, unlawful, informal, or self-evictions) refer to the measures that landlords take outside of the court system to evict or forcibly remove tenants. Extra-legal evictions do not leave a formal record. There are many ways a landlord can compel or entice a tenant to move without going to court, including threatening the tenant, changing the locks, shutting off the utilities, or paying the tenant a sum of money to move out (Desmond and Shollenberger, 2015).
  • Administrative evictions refer to an option available only to PHAs to evict Public Housing residents via administrative action (and without a court determination), in accordance with HUD regulations, if such action is permitted by local law and after a due process administrative hearing.

What drives eviction?

Nationwide, the most common cause of eviction is nonpayment of rent, driven by a national shortage of affordable housing, particularly for low-income households. Evidence indicates that landlords consider eviction as a last resort and will often file to collect arrears of rent rather than solely to displace a tenant.

  • Lack of affordable, available housing makes it difficult for low-income renters to weather income disruptions or unexpected expenses.. Nationwide, there is a significant shortage of affordable housing, with only 62 affordable housing units available for every 100 very low-income households as of 2019. More than two in three low-income renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, including more than 10 million households who spend more than 50 percent of their income on rent and utilities (Worst Case Housing Needs, 2021).
  • When money is tight, relatively low levels of arrearages can result in eviction and displacement in the absence of other resolution supports or diversion options. Recent analysis of court records assembled by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University found that half of all the eviction cases filed in Cincinnati between April and August 2020 involved rental debts of $1,200 or less (evictionlab.org). In Houston, over the same period, half of all cases involved $1,411 or less and in Phoenix, half of all cases involved less than $1,643 (Louis, Durana, and Hepburn, 2020). Similarly, a study of eviction filings in Washington, DC between 2014 and 2018 found that the average tenant receiving an eviction filing owed about $1,207 at the time the eviction was filed (Rosen and McCabe, 2020).

Other major local factors affecting the likelihood a landlord will file for eviction include the cost of the filing fee, the expected duration of the proceeding, and the tenant’s access to eviction defense (Nelson et al, 2021). But a myriad of other factors can put a tenant at risk of eviction. In some localities, even calling an emergency number to request help may put tenants at risk of eviction due to local ordinances that make landlords responsible for excessive calls to emergency numbers (Moran-McCabe, Gutman, and Buris, 2018).


Who gets evicted?

Millions of families face eviction each year, whether through formal court processes or informally, outside the court system. There is strong evidence, however, that landlords do not pursue evictions equally across households. Black and Hispanic women, as well as families with children, are disproportionately affected by eviction—and the long-term consequences are significant.

  • Poor families with children are more likely to be evicted. Between 1998 and 2000, almost 15 percent of American children born in large cities had experienced an eviction by age 15. The percentage was approximately 29 percent for children living in deep poverty (Lundberg and Donnelly, 2019).
  • People of color and women are more likely to be evicted. In 2020, analysis of Eviction Lab data found that, while Black renters constituted 19.9% of all renters in the counties for which the organization had data, they constituted 32.7% of all eviction filings. In all, one in every five adult renters in the sample was Black, yet one in every three evictions were served to a Black renter. Furthermore, across all renters, the risk of eviction was approximately 2% higher for women than for men. Among Black renters this increases to 4%, and for Latinx renters it jumps to 9% (https://evictionlab.org/demographics-of-eviction/).
  • Living in a white neighborhood can also increase the risk of eviction for people of color. Research shows that among tenants at risk of eviction, Hispanic tenants in predominantly white neighborhoods were roughly twice as likely to be evicted as those in predominantly non-white neighborhoods. Hispanic tenants were also more likely to get evicted when they had a non-Hispanic landlord (Greenberg, Gershenson, and Desmond, 2016).
  • Eviction negatively affects housing stability, health, and employment, with notable long-term consequences for children experiencing eviction. Evictions cause large and persistent increases in the risk of homelessness, elevate long-term residential instability, and increase emergency room use (Collinson and Reed, 2018). Analysis from Urban and Eviction Lab’s Matt Desmond (2015) found that evicted mothers were more than twice as likely to report that their children were in poor health compared with mothers who had not experienced an eviction (Desmond and Kimbro, 2015). Eviction can also effect a child’s development before they are even born; Cordova-Ramos et al (2021) found that eviction during pregnancy, particularly during the second and third trimesters, was associated with lower birth weight (Himmelstein and Desmond, 2021).

Why does representation matter?

While most landlords are represented during eviction proceedings, most tenants are not. This prevents most tenants from engaging in informed mediation or accessing proper legal defenses. Correspondingly, this asymmetry leaves tenants more vulnerable to landlords who exploit the scarcity of legal assistance by pursuing extra-legal evictions, filing fraudulent or less justified evictions, raising claim amounts, and expediting evictions without providing proper time for tenants to vacate the property.

Representation is a proven intervention in the eviction process. Representation can help tenants prevent eviction in the courtroom, whether through judgement or mediation. Representation can also prevent filings or removals from occurring in the first place by staving off illegal evictions and educating tenants about their rights. Finally, legal assistance is an important component of broader eviction diversion and remediation programming that helps struggling tenants access stabilizing resources.


What does research indicate are the effects of giving tenants right to counsel?

  • New York’s right to counsel decreased evictions overall by 18 percent (Navarro, 2016), declining over five times faster in zip codes with a right to counsel (Oksana, 2019). NYC also saw a decrease in executed warrants of eviction and likely increased tenants’ ability to access legal services (Ellen et al, 2019).
  • A study in Baltimore found that an annual investment of $5.7 million in a right to counsel program in Baltimore would yield $35.6 million in benefits or costs avoided to the city and state.
  • A similar study in Cleveland found that implementation of a right to counsel prevented eviction judgments and allowed clients to achieve housing goals at high rates.
  • A study in Minnesota found fully represented tenants win or settle their cases 96 percent of the time and clients receiving limited representation win or settle their cases 83 percent of the time. These figures compare with just 62 percent of tenants without any representation. Tenants with full representation were twice as likely to stay in their homes or got twice as much time to move, left court without an eviction record, and were four times less likely to use homeless shelters (Grundman & Kruger, 2018).
  • A demonstration in San Francisco found representation decreased homelessness for vulnerable tenants (San Francisco Demonstration Program). A California-wide program found that representation increased mediation, either preventing eviction or providing tenants time to find new living arrangements; even when evicted, they were left in a better position (Shriver Act Evaluation, 2017).
  • The American Bar Association recommends a right to counsel for eviction defendants.

Evaluation of the Eviction Protection Grant Program

The evaluation component of the Eviction Protection Grant Program is comprised of an implementation analysis utilizing qualitative and quantitative data to understand how the Eviction Protection Grant Program reduces or prevents eviction among program participants. The evaluation will comprehensively document program implementation, including a review and collection of data to understand implementation successes and challenges, the characteristics of grantees and other stakeholders, the types of client services provided, how grantees work with other social service providers, and program outcomes. Of key interest is determining how legal assistance was paired with other housing services and opportunities to provide eviction protection services more effectively or efficiently through the program. The final report is expected in Fall 2024.


The following are vignettes concerning real-life client experiences. These narratives were provided by program grantees within the first 6 months of program launch and detail early examples of actual client experiences and outcomes that have been supported with grant funds. Client information has been anonymized and edited for length and clarity.


  • Tonya and Peter reached out for help when they found themselves experiencing a self-help (“informal”) eviction. The landlord changed the locks, took their personal property, and called the police in an attempt to force them out without a court order. The EPGP attorney informed the tenants that these steps were clearly illegal and wrote a letter to the landlord’s attorney demanding that they be allowed to remain there peacefully unless and until they were evicted using the proper procedure. The landlord complied with this demand, preserving their tenancy.
  • Dana’s landlord was tacking on fees for having a service animal and then arguing that rent was unpaid. Dana’s attempts to negotiate with the property manager were unsuccessful, but were more successful with the support of an attorney. Dana’s attorney provided an education letter and leveraged HUD resources and case law to help resolve the case. Dana’s landlord agreed to forgive fees, forgo the eviction, and not terminate the lease.
  • Vera discovered that her daughter had obtained her mentally incapacitated grandmother's signature on a quitclaim deed. Vera’s daughter then attempted to use the eviction process to drive Vera out of the trailer home where she had been living for decades. After reaching out to an EPGP provider for support, her attorneys were able to have the eviction complaint dismissed.
  • Grantees are identifying strong legal defenses to eviction matters and reshaping how judges and stakeholders view eviction court, as one grantee described: “Judges…are not accustomed to tenants raising legal challenges in eviction actions. Instead, judges (and the opposing attorneys) approach a trial for eviction as being limited only to the question of whether rent was paid. We have made an emphasis on pushing back on these views. Our call-to-action comes from the United States Supreme Court in Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U.S. 363 (1974): Our courts were never intended to serve as rubber stamps for landlords seeking to evict their tenants, but rather to see that justice be done before a man is evicted from his home.”

  • Kate is a single mother who lost income due to COVID and fell behind on her rent. She applied and was approved for rental assistance; however, checks were delayed due to the rental assistance program’s backlog. Meanwhile, Kate’s landlord filed an eviction lawsuit against her. The grantee's housing team stepped in and reached out to opposing counsel and the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance administrator. The rental assistance checks were received, and the housing team had the eviction dismissed.
  • Clement was once successfully employed and lived a largely independent life until a few years ago when an accident turned his life upside down. He lost his job and had chronic pain. After a few years of therapy, Clement was able to get back to work. Just weeks after he started working again, COVID shutdowns ended his plans. Clement contracted COVID-19 and suffered debilitating, long-term symptoms. Due to these misfortunes, Clement fell behind on rent and was served an eviction notice. Clement reached out to an EPGP grantee for support. Clement’s initial consultation with his attorney resulted in the discovery that, in addition to his eviction issues, Clement had unresolved immigration issues preventing him from receiving social security benefits and emergency rental assistance. Clement’s attorney helped him reapply for rental assistance with the proper documentation. Within days, Clement was approved for 15 months of back rent. In addition, Clement’s attorney arranged for Clement to work with another attorney on his Social Security issue, so Clement could obtain his benefits and be able to pay his rent in the future. Clement’s landlord still had concerns about keeping Clement as a tenant, but prior to the eviction hearing, Clement’s attorney and his landlord mediated a settlement. The landlord accepted the rental assistance payment, and Clement remains in his apartment. He recently received some social security benefits.
  • Lindsay had been renting from a relative for several years. Lindsay became ill and had to go to the hospital and then later to a medical facility for rehabilitation. When she was ready to return home, the relative/landlord told Lindsay she could not come back. A grantee advised Lindsay on her legal rights and encouraged her to talk to the relative about her returning home. It took several conversations, but with the support of her attorney, Lindsay and her relative ultimately were able to reach an agreement for Lindsay to come back to her home.

  • A survivor of domestic abuse was facing eviction due to the landlord’s “no crime” policy and reached out to an EPGP grantee for support. The attorney collaborated with a local university legal clinic. The clinic provided the housing provider with a letter detailing the survivor’s rights, and the attorney followed up with the housing provider. The housing provider agreed to stop the eviction, write a new lease, and change discriminatory language in the lease. The housing provider also agreed to re-home the client in a new home and agreed to a waiver of fees that are normally assessed.
  • Following a frightening shooting incident at their apartment complex and a routine discussion with responding officers, Miriam and her husband were served an eviction notice. The notice stated that the property manager deemed her a nuisance for having been “involved” with the shooting and was giving them 3 days to vacate the apartment. Suspecting they had received illicit treatment due to their race, Miriam contacted legal aid for support. With assistance from an EPGP attorney, the nuisance complaint was dropped. The landlord, however, attempted to continue the eviction process by refusing the next month’s rent, causing Miriam to reach back out for help. The EPGP attorney continued to assist Miriam with navigating the housing court process and discovered another eviction on the couple’s record of which they were completely unaware. At trial, the EPGP attorney was able to have Miriam’s current eviction dismissed and the previous eviction sealed, ensuring it would not influence the couple’s future ability to locate and secure housing. Miriam was grateful that she and her husband were vindicated as rule-abiding tenants, spared from a series of unfair evictions, and able to remediate their prior rental history, especially in a daunting housing market.
  • Mandy, a disabled tenant, was threatened with eviction for keeping her emotional support cat in her residence. After having reached out to legal aid, an EPGP attorney provided Mandy with instructions on how to make a reasonable accommodation request under the Fair Housing Act to keep her cat and remain at the residence.

  • An EPGP grantee initiated an outreach campaign to renters in a community of local townhomes facing mass evictions at the hands of a new, out-of-state owner. As has been observed in many housing markets across the country, large corporate landlords from out-of-state are increasingly acquiring large apartment complexes that have historically catered to low-income households, with the intent of renovating and raising rents. This typically results in large scale evictions of hundreds of tenants at a time and an overall loss of affordable rental units in the community. The grantee has plans to expand targeted outreach to other apartment complexes that have recently experienced a change in ownership.
  • Brandy was unaware that she was able to access previous court records (e.g., eviction records) via the clerk’s public website portal. Brandy was grateful that legal aid was able to help her navigate the clerk’s website, understand this information, and be empowered in sustainably managing her future relationships/communications with landlords that may look up this information.
  • In order to target underserved populations, including tenants living in rural areas and immigrant communities, an EPGP grantee participated in an informational session webinar hosted by a local migrant association. During the informational session, the grantee provided information in the audience’s preferred language about local emergency rental assistance options still available to tenants after the closing of the state rental assistance program. The local migrant organization indicated it would further disseminate the information about local rental assistance programs through their organization’s network and member communications.
  • Two EPGP providers worked together to develop thirty-second public service announcement (PSA) templates to provide information about a statewide anti-eviction project and inform tenants about how to apply for assistance. In addition to English, the grantees translated the PSA into Spanish and Haitian-Creole, and connected with radio stations throughout the state that reach target audiences, including immigrants and those living in rural areas.

  • Sue, an elderly tenant, fell prey to an equity-theft scam and deeded her home to scammers. By the time Sue reached out to legal aid, the scammers had already been granted an eviction and Sue had been removed by the police. EPGP grant funds allowed Sue to contest this illicit conduct and the company agreed to not only set aside the eviction, but to re-deed the home to Sue.
  • Elisa was an older woman being evicted from assisted living because her private funding had run out and Medicaid funding had yet to start. The facility’s owner and financial manager admitted to forming an agreement with Elisa and then reneging on it. Elisa reached out to legal aid for assistance and was connected with an attorney. The attorney forestalled the eviction and secured a tentative agreement to allow her to stay until they have an alternative bed open or her family agrees that she is to be moved.
  • Faith found herself being evicted for a material lease violation. With legal assistance, opposing counsel agreed to give Faith and her family additional time to voluntarily vacate, to accept emergency rental assistance payment (ERAP) funds, and to not file an eviction. While Faith and her family had to vacate their house, locating future housing will not be limited by an eviction on the family’s record.
  • Tammy could not find a place to live after her landlord sold her house and her lease ended. Having previously been the victim of domestic violence, Tammy had significant concerns about having to move to a new housing unit and reached out an EPGP attorney. The attorney was able to negotiate for 34 more days for Tammy to stay in the residence to find new housing before any eviction would be filed.

  • An elderly man with disabilities contacted legal aid when his landlord filed an eviction case against him in housing court. The case was brought because the tenant had accumulated belongings in his apartment and management believed it was interfering with their ability to combat an insect infestation problem in the building. The tenant was willing to remove and organize his belongings, but his physical limitations made doing it himself a challenge. He had also fallen behind on the rent. An EPGP advocate submitted an ERAP application for the back rent, and this application submission triggered the protections of state law under which, in certain circumstances, an eviction case cannot go forward while such an application is pending. The advocate therefore had time to work with a program run by the housing court that connects tenants and landlords to services. She also coordinated with her client’s personal care attendant to work on organizing and removing many of the tenant’s items. The landlord was then willing to enter into an agreement to maintain the tenancy.
  • Kendrick contacted an EPGP grantee after his eviction. Kendrick and his family, including a child with disabilities, had been living in a hotel for months. Kendrick’s family was being denied a new rental due to the eviction. The EPGP housing navigator verified with the statewide rental assistance program that the landlord had received and deposited the past due rent amounts after Kendrick and his family had vacated the home. The EPGP attorney worked with Kendrick and was able to successfully have the judgment vacated, case dismissed with prejudice, and the record sealed. The family will now be able to find new rental housing and move out of the hotel.

Government icon  Government Media


National Media icon  National Media


Local Media icon  Local Media

Florida

  • Jacksonville veteran facing eviction receives help just in time

    • "I encourage all the people who are going through what I'm going through to make sure to call the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid office," said Strickland. "It's been so much of a relief, right now I can probably go to sleep tonight because I haven't gotten any rest for the last 3 months."
  • Jacksonville woman says former landlord can't find her Our Florida rent payment
    • “Someone is lying," Swift said. "I have the return receipt where someone from Mainstreet signed for the check on April 22. They sold our property on April 21.”
  • Help is available now that Our Florida is done accepting applications
    • “If you're facing eviction, the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid eviction court form builder tool was created before the pandemic and still offers timely guidance. ‘We continue to change it to meet the needs and the moment with the defenses that are out there and the legal landscape that is out there,’ says Garrow, 'it will most assuredly be there and be active and updated to reflect what options and defenses people have now.’”

Idaho

Louisiana

Maine

  • Pine Tree Legal among recipients as HUD doubles eviction help
    • “We need to keep doing all that we can to help people maintain quality housing,” Fudge said in a statement. “We know that access to legal services and eviction diversion programs works. It helps people avoid evictions and protects tenants’ rights.”

Nevada