The Delaware State Senate advanced legislation that gives tenants a right to representation in eviction proceedings and other landlord-tenant actions.
The bill earlier passed in the House on a party line vote, but had bipartisan support in the Senate. The bill exempts landlords, with only a few properties.
The bill also creates a pre-trial diversion program aimed at resolving landlord-tenant disputes before they reach a courtroom. Delaware is believed to be one of four states to pass similar legislation.
“The downstream impacts of evictions on our economy and on our public health are massive and have only been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, D-Newark, the bill’s lead sponsor. “Housing instability caused by unnecessary evictions means more people living in government-sponsored shelters, more children moving from school to school and into our foster care system, and more sick people seeking care in hospitals instead of local doctors. It means poorer physical and mental health, damage to personal credit, loss of personal property, and increased risk of lost employment.”
A study of eviction data by the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy found that 14 tenants in Delaware are evicted from their homes on an average day – a rate two percentage points higher than the national average. And At $45 per case, eviction filings are relatively inexpensive for landlords.
Black and Latinx families, who have been disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, also tend to be disproportionately targeted by evictions, largely because they tend to have a lower rate of homeownership than white families. Nationally, Black renters have evictions filed against them at a much higher rate than white renters.
Only about 2% of tenants have legal representation in Delaware eviction proceedings, compared to about 86% of landlords who are represented in court by an attorney, a property manager or other agent, according to the Biden School.
Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 1 seeks to address these issues in two key ways.
The legislation creates a Right to Representation Coordinator position appointed by the Attorney General and empowered to contract with one or more nonprofits — like Delaware Community Legal Aid Society — to offer legal representation by an attorney or non-attorney advocate to tenants facing eviction proceedings whose household income is less than 200% of the federal poverty guidelines. More than $1.3 million in funding to build out this program is included in the governor’s recommended FY2024 budget.
Additionally, the legislation would establish a residential eviction diversion program modeled after Delaware’s Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation Program, which has helped more than 62% of participants stay in their homes since its creation after the recession of 2008-2009. Tenants in the mediation process also would be provided with a designated housing counselor, and many landlord-tenant disputes would have to pass through the diversion program before any formal legal action could be taken.
The legislation exempts “mom and pop” landlords who rent three or fewer family-owned properties and who are not represented by an attorney. It also does not guarantee counsel when an attorney review deems the tenant’s case lacks merit.
The bill was sent to Carney for his signature.
