An Eviction Crisis Emerges, BU Law Students Step Up
Volunteers help tenants navigate a complicated legal system.
Jaclyn Tayabji (’21), research assistant with the Access to Justice Clinic
An Eviction Crisis Emerges, BU Law Students Step Up
Volunteers help tenants navigate a complicated legal system.
When the pandemic hit last year, Jade Brown, BU Law clinical instructor with the Civil Litigation & Justice Program, knew that she’d need a lot more help in housing court.
Brown, a Class of 2016 alum, returned to BU Law to teach in fall 2020 after spending four years as a staff attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS). At GBLS, Brown often staffed a weekly clinic in housing court consulting with Boston-area tenants, many of whom had been served with eviction notices. She would usually start by helping tenants prepare an “Answer,” a legal document that shows a tenant’s intention of challenging their eviction. Under Massachusetts law, tenants only have a short window to file an Answer; without filing one at all, tenants can stand at a huge disadvantage in court.
The need for more support in housing court was already looming by early fall. Although the Boston Housing Authority set a moratorium on nonessential evictions in city public housing in March 2020, that order was initially set to expire in October 2020. A September 2020 federal moratorium (extended several times by the Biden administration) protected some tenants, but the Supreme Court struck down nationwide protections in August 2021. Boston and other municipalities again established local bans, but housing attorneys anticipate a wave of eviction filings and hearings once the orders are lifted.
Not only was the need for support high, but none of the traditional means of connecting tenants with attorneys were possible at the height of COVID-19 spread.
Brown saw an opportunity—with an online portal developed by a colleague at GBLS to prepare Answer documents—to tap into help from the law student population.
“I really felt we could reach a large number of people. I know, having worked in legal services, just how overwhelmed the system is and how overwhelmed we were,” Brown says.
Brown set to work with Jaclyn Tayabji (’21), a research assistant with BU Law’s Access to Justice Clinic, to develop a system to train BU Law students as volunteers to help tenants prepare Answers over the phone. Last Fall, they launched a pro bono service project at BU Law utilizing the MA Defense for Eviction (MADE) Portal to help tenants. The MADE online portal was created by Quinten Steenhuis and is available through Greater Boston Legal Services.
The volunteer project, run through the Access to Justice Clinic within the Civil Litigation & Justice Program, connects trained student volunteers with tenants needing some extra guidance to put together an Answer. Volunteers, at times using the help of a third-party translator, can complete the form through the MADE portal over the phone with tenants, and tenants can sign off on the document through their own smartphones.
I really felt we could reach a large number of people. I know, having worked in legal services, just how overwhelmed the system is and how overwhelmed we were.
For students, MADE offered a way to get directly involved in high-stakes legal matters from a (social) distance. Marie Tashima (’23) was quick to respond to Tayabji’s call for volunteers exactly because it offered a way to get involved from over the phone.
Tashima came to law school having already worked in housing advocacy in a few different cities, but she appreciated the way that MADE offered a practical application of what she was learning in class. “I think I’ve really developed my civil procedure skills,” Tashima says of the experience. “I was a paralegal before this, but even then, I didn’t really know what happened.”
While MADE goes a long way to help low-income tenants navigate an eviction system often stacked against them, Tayabji is careful to point out that it remains purely a harm-reduction measure for the city’s broader housing insecurity issues.
“I think this project and the work that the volunteers do is very much a Band-Aid. It’s very much responding to the most pressing and urgent need in a way that is manageable for us to do,” she says.
As vaccination efforts continue and courts reopen, Brown is already looking toward MADE’s work over the next few months.
“I’m really looking forward to being able to build up this project a little more over the next year, to get more volunteers trained. I think no one is looking forward to the flood of evictions, but we see it starting to happen,” she says.
Tayabji also hopes to see Massachusetts lawmakers meet housing attorneys halfway.
“I think the work that we’re doing is important—it’s important in the life of the tenant’s case; but the real change needs to come from systemic change. That needs to come from policymakers,” she adds.
