The Legal Aid Society on Monday announced a major expansion of its resources to help a growing number of New Yorkers who have been evicted or face imminent eviction.
The nonprofit law firm’s emergency response team, which has intervened in 170 urgent housing cases citywide since June 2025, is now slated to take on up to 600 such cases a year, according to Legal Aid.
A boost in funding from the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance — including $5.3 million in fiscal year 2026 and the same amount in fiscal year 2027 — will spare the city’s most vulnerable families from being rendered homeless or displaced, according to Legal Aid.
Munonyedi Clifford, the attorney-in-charge of Legal Aid’s citywide housing practice, told the Daily News that a surge in calls to the public defender group’s housing helpline was the impetus for the emergency response team’s creation. The hotline has received a staggering 18,000 calls from tenants in crisis in the last year alone.
“Hundreds of tenants were calling who were supposed to have gotten an attorney in housing court, but for whatever reason, fell through the cracks, and they were oftentimes folks who were about to get evicted or had already been evicted. So, the clock is really ticking on these cases, and like they really, really are people who needed our help,” Clifford said.
“The court process is challenging for attorneys, much less pro se tenants who are up against a system that’s not designed to provide them with justice.”
Comprised of a citywide director, 13 paralegals, and three supervisors, the emergency response team will work to protect tenants against illegal lockouts, marshal-executed evictions, and aggressive tactics by landlords, like trying to rent out someone’s home while they fight to keep it in court; 15% of the state funding has been committed to help people cover rental arrears.
In a statement, OTDA Commissioner Barbara Guinn said the agency was “proud to provide funding for this important new program and grateful to Governor Hochul for her steadfast commitment to providing New Yorkers the support and resources necessary to maintain stable housing.”
New York City tenants facing eviction are supposed to be guaranteed free legal representation in Housing Court under the “Right to Counsel” law, but Clifford said many people who are eligible are still going it alone.
When right-to-counsel expanded between 2019 and 2024, the number of eligible cases tripled — rising from about 15,675 cases to 50,487 cases, according to a 2025 report by the city’s Independent Budget Office, which noted that program spending during the same period failed to keep pace with increased eligibility.
“I think people think that, you know, [Right to Counsel has] been fully implemented, and everyone who’s eligible is getting a lawyer, and that’s really not the headline, right?” Clifford said Monday. “The program needs to be fully funded to cover all eligible cases.”
Legal Aid’s fully implemented rapid response team comes some four years after the nonprofit and other public defender groups ran out of lawyers to rep tenants when a statewide moratorium on evictions was lifted in January 2022, and thousands of landlord lawsuits flooded the dockets.