Dear Lucas:
Today in her
State of the City Address, Speaker Mark-Viverito made a powerful case for building on the City Council’s
efforts to expand the availability of legal representation. As you should
know by now if you’ve been reading these emails over the past year,
it’s a cause that
I, too, have championed. In the speech, she called for the creation of a first of its kind Office
of the Civil Justice Coordinator. Its role will be to ensure legal representation
is available to all, as part of the Speaker’s efforts to create
a government that works on behalf of the people we represent -- you.
I’m proud to have worked with Speaker Mark-Viverito and her team to develop our bill to create this new office, and we look forward to introducing it shortly. Over a million low-income New Yorkers who need civil legal help do not receive it. I’ve talked at length about the thousands of New Yorkers battling evictions and abusive landlords. Our neighbors also struggle with predatory debt collectors, and receiving the government benefits they are entitled to. The ultimate goal of this this new initiative is to make sure no one has to go at it alone.
We’ve had a few great victories in our quest to achieve a “ right to counsel” for all low-income tenants over the past week. Under the leadership of Speaker Mark-Viverito, we are also investing an additional $7.5 million in the Court-Based Homelessness Prevention Project, which targets legal and social services into areas that have high rates of homelessness. And Mayor de Blasio proposed spending $36 million dollars to help stave off gentrification, by providing legal services to protect existing affordable units before we build new ones in a handful of communities around the city.
We’re blowing out of the water the $5 million in legal services for tenants that the City Council funded last year. And our funding last year was double the level from the year before. This is huge.
But we still have a lot of work ahead of us; this is no time to rest on our laurels. A recent report revealed that New York’s homeless population is at a record high. As rents reach record highs making our city increasingly unaffordable, we are bleeding thousands of affordable housing units each year. Fully funding my bill to guarantee these services for those in need, Intro 214, is an investment worth making as it is an effective antidote to both of these problems. Every dollar we spend saves $5-6 dollars in the provision of services down the road.
This is first and foremost a moral issue. It’s about what justice and fairness means in a legal arena in which 90 percent of tenants are facing an eviction without a lawyer. New York City is in a position to be the national leader on this. And we need to be. There isn’t another big city in the country that’s facing an affordable housing crisis on the scale that we are. Let’s continue the bold moves made by our Mayor and our Speaker. Let’s take this opportunity and use it to rewrite the rule book for housing court.
This incredible momentum is what happens when community, advocates, and
government come together and form a powerful coalition to fight for justice
for everyday New Yorkers. Will you join us?
Become a part of the Coalition for Justice in Housing Court today.
Onward,
Mark