“Without counsel, tenants lose nearly every time,” said Rae Elsen, a member of the Dayton Tenant Union. “With counsel, they stand a fighting chance.”
Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein earlier this summer said the city is waiting to get information and data about the Access to Counsel pilot before making decisions about a potential future program.
“The last update I had was that program would run through the year and then they would share the data with us and they would share the data with the county,” she said. “And then we would look at that and try to figure out a way to do that.”
Going to the city
Members and supporters of the Dayton Tenant Union have spoken at Dayton City Commission meetings several times in recent months to urge city leaders to create a local housing trust fund.
Housing trust funds are established by elected government bodies and often provide financing for eviction defense and affordable housing preservation and development. These funds often support a wide variety of activities like place-based and tenant-based rental assistance to help bridge the gap between incomes and housing costs, says the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The Dayton Tenant Union wants a new fund that helps pay for legal defense in eviction cases for low-income renters; rental assistance; a rental registry program; and home repair costs.
The Dayton Tenant Union is asking the city at a minimum to put $650,000 of its income tax revenue into a new housing trust fund. When Dayton’s elected leaders put an earnings tax renewal levy on the ballot in the spring of 2024, they committed to using at least $650,000 of the revenue for housing investments.
Last November, a pilot program launched in northwest Dayton that pays for a full-time attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality to represent low-income tenants in court, and the pilot also covers the costs of other services.
The overwhelming majority of landlords in local eviction cases have private lawyers, while very few renters have legal representation.
The pilot program is expected to serve 125 families. Through July, about 53 families had received legal assistance.
The Access to Counsel pilot program includes a robust cost-benefit and outcomes-focused analysis conducted by third-party experts, which will be shared when the pilot program concludes, said Learn to Earn Dayton CEO Stacy Schweikhart.
“Thus far, indications are that the program is very beneficial and we look forward to working with program partners, the courts, the city and the county to explore opportunities to scale the service to serve more students and families in the future,” she said. Learn to Earn is a partner on the pilot program.
Dickstein says Dayton in recent years has heavily invested in affordable housing projects and housing rehab programs. City officials say about $18 million of the city’s $138 million in federal COVID relief funding has gone to housing development and improvements.
Dickstein said the city also wants to support important initiatives that prevent people from facing eviction.
Larry Hayden, board member with the Dayton Tenant Union, said preliminary data from the Access to Counsel pilot indicate that about 87% of tenants represented by ABLE were charged late fees by their landlords, and nearly 60% of those fees were determined to be improper based on legal review.
He said about six in 10 clients served by the program have jobs, and the same share have a household member with a disability or a health condition. Eight in 10 clients have children in the home.
Hayden said the city is using income tax revenue to support the Montgomery County Land Bank’s Welcome Home Ohio program that seeks to build 40 new homes in multiple Dayton neighborhoods.
He said this is a “wonderful program” that will help first-time, low-income home buyers achieve home ownership. But he said many residents are renters who are nowhere close to purchasing a home.
He said the tenant union hopes income tax levy funds in future years can be put toward a housing trust fund.
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