Since St. Louis started its scaled-back Right to Counsel program for city renters last August, tenants facing eviction have deluged the two attorneys assigned to the program with requests for help. Now activist groups are calling for the city to restore the program to its original ambitions—and funding.
Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, the nonprofit that the city contracted with to represent renters in the program last year, only catches a small, single-digit percentage of renters facing eviction. Dan Buran, one of two Legal Services lawyers assigned to the program, is the one who handles client intake. He says that they begin receiving calls from prospective clients at 8:30 a.m. on Mondays, and usually need to start turning people away by noon.
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The other Legal Services lawyer, Shawn Caruso, said he has to turn people away he encounters at the courthouse, and is still so busy with court proceedings that he rarely sees his girlfriend. Both attorneys attended a meeting of the aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee Wednesday, called in response to a push for further funding of the program.
Jamila Mitchell, who spoke at a press conference before Wednesday’s meeting and later addressed the committee itself, described feeling overwhelmed by housing court. The coalition of activists speaking Wednesday called on Mitchell to discuss her experience as a renter, along with two others: one speaking to the positive impact of the right to counsel program, and the other, Mitchell, explaining what it’s like to go through housing court without a lawyer.
“When you go to these courtrooms, it’s almost like an auction block,” Mitchell said to the committee. “You have the elderly there, and I’m talking about, they know absolutely nothing of what’s going on. You have families with their children, I’m talking about the panic in these little kids’ eyes.
“This could just be avoided with just a simple conversation, with the Right to Counsel stepping in for our renters.”
As SLM previously reported via the River City Journalism Fund, the city originally planned to kick off the program with $1 million annually, growing to $5 million a year as it scaled up. But the city ultimately earmarked much less for the program, and in August of 2024, contracted with Legal Services for just $685,000 for two years. At the time, Aldermanic President Megan Green had noted that the aldermanic bill to fund the program with $5 million had failed to gain enough votes, leading to a smaller program with scaled-back funding.
Now, a coalition that includes Action St. Louis, ArchCity Defenders, those organizations’ tenants organizing arm We The Tenants, Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis, and a host of others are calling for an annual appropriation of at least $2.5 million.
With that added funding, Legal Services could afford to hire 15 lawyers for tenants, and dramatically increase the number of cases it could take on to help renters, Buran told the committee.
In their letter addressed to Green, Mayor Cara Spencer, Comptroller Donna Baringer and the Board of Aldermen, the coalition said the need for further funding comes as the city sees an “eviction surge.”
ArchCity Defenders lawyer Lee Camp, who helped draft the Right to Counsel bill, said the city sees roughly 5,000 evictions a year, and this year it anticipates upwards of 6,000.
The three members of the committee who stayed for the full meeting—committee chair Shameem Clark Hubbard, Alisha Sonnier and Rasheen Aldridge—all expressed support for increasing funding for the program. Clark Hubbard said after the meeting that the amount they requested could easily be done through the mayor’s office with “a stroke of the pen.”
Spencer said Thursday that she saw the need for further funding, and shared some of the concerns voiced at that meeting, but stopped short of committing to increasing funding.
“We’re in a housing crisis in the United States,” she said, mentioning inflation.
She said that there was a process outlined in the bill establishing the program that dictated how further funding could be considered. “If that’s initiated we will certainly take a look at that,” she said.
The ordinance outlines the budgeting process for Right to Counsel as falling under a full-time coordinator role at the city’s Department of Health and Human Services, Edna Jackson. Among her duties is helping estimate annual budgets for that program and outreach. Some speakers and alderpeople at Wednesday’s hearing criticized Jackson for not reaching out to tenant organizing groups, a duty outlined in the bill.
