‘Pull back the layers’: Tenant advocates help low-income Delawareans avoid evictions in one-of-a-kind program

What are journalists missing from the state of Delaware? What would you most like WHYY News to cover? Let us know.

Janine, a Wilmington resident, was on the brink of homelessness when a first-of-its-kind state program prevented her from losing her housing.

Delaware implemented the Qualified Tenant Advocate program in 2022, which pairs specially trained nonattorneys with low-income residents facing eviction.

Since its inception, it has allowed Janine and thousands of other Delawareans to avoid an eviction on their record, and the stigma that goes along with it.

‘Administrative error’

Janine’s landlord raised her rent in 2024. WHYY News is using her first name to protect her rental history from being associated with an eviction.

She was living in state-subsidized housing, using a voucher from the Delaware State Housing Authority to rent from a private landlord.

The agency approved a rent increase that June, but due to an administrative error, continued to pay the same amount to Janine’s landlord. She pays about 30% of her income toward rent and utilities and the housing authority pays the rest.

Janine, who has cerebral palsy, had been struggling personally at the time. A widow, her daughter had recently died, leaving her to raise her 6-year-old grandson as his sole provider.

Janine said as the unpaid rent piled up, her landlord began to pressure her for the money.

“He got to the point that he would call me and harass me,” she said. “Every time I turned around, his court papers were in the mail.”

Qualified Tenant Advocate Rena Scott said the amount of unpaid back rent built up over about a year as Janine kept insisting to her landlord she was paying her rent, all the while the Delaware State Housing Agency was paying the wrong amount.

“This landlord was particularly egregious, very aggressive in his collection practices,” Scott said. “And the regulations say tenants can’t be held responsible for what a housing authority owes.”

Janine said as the conflict escalated, her landlord demanded she pay about $4,000 to avoid being evicted.

‘Pull back the layers’

For decades, Justice of the Peace courts permitted landlords to be represented by nonattorneys. But tenants had to be represented by a lawyer, leaving many to try their luck in court alone or simply not go.

A 2020 analysis by the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy and Administration found that 86% of landlords had some kind of representation during an eviction hearing, while just 2% of renters had a lawyer.

But in 2022, the Delaware Supreme Court changed the rules so low-income tenants could have the same right to be represented by a nonlawyer.

Scott’s job is to take on the landlords and dig into the reasons someone is facing eviction. She said she currently has 40 active cases.

“We really kind of start to pull back the layers to see what’s really at the heart of their issue,” she said. “That’s the way I try to approach the cases. Let’s get down to what we can do to resolve this.”

Scott and other advocates are trained and supervised by lawyers from one of the state’s three legal aid organizations. Community Legal Aid Society, Inc., also known as CLASI, employs five qualified tenant advocates, including Scott. Delaware Volunteer Legal Services has one and Legal Services Corporation of Delaware has two qualified tenant advocates and one person in training.

Qualified Tenant Advocate program and Right to Representation law leads to fewer evictions

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Delaware had one of the highest eviction rates in the U.S., with about 18,000 filed in 2019, CLASI Executive Director Dan Atkins said, adding that evictions disproportionately affect communities of color.

During the pandemic, Delaware and other states had eviction moratoriums, but housing advocates and landlords were concerned that there would be a tsunami of evictions once those bans were lifted.

To address those fears, legal aid groups sought the rule change on representation and state lawmakers passed a 2023 right to representation law. It gives Delawareans with income below 200% of the federal poverty level free legal representation in eviction and other landlord-tenant cases.

Delaware lawmakers added $3.2 million in the fiscal year 2027 budget for the Right to Representation and the Qualified Tenant Advocate program. The law is being phased in over three years.

These programs have made a significant impact on helping families avoid eviction, according to a report on the second year of implementation by Right to Representation Coordinator Lisa Lessner.

The data shows that 1,726 households were served, with at least 792 evictions avoided. Eviction filings have decreased by 36% since 2019.

CLASI attorney Sarah Rhine said having qualified tenant advocates represent tenants saves money and helps people stay housed.

“Starting this program was kind of a marriage between the need for increased legal representation and the innovation of the courts to meet that need,” she said. “The idea was that we would bring people into the organization that maybe had lived experience, maybe reflected our client population more, maybe just had an interest or a passion in doing this work and weren’t able to access law school, or who were just brilliant people who wanted to give back to their communities.”

‘The resources are not available’

Over several months, Scott worked with Janine’s landlord and Delaware State Housing Authority to correct the administrative error and resolve the back rent issue. Janine said she has since moved into a better housing situation.

New legislation aimed at preventing evictions was signed into law last month. It allows a tenant who is being ousted for failure to pay rent to get a reprieve if they pay what they owe prior to being evicted.

Rhine told WHYY News that just a few thousand dollars can often resolve a case with a landlord, much less than it costs the state of Delaware to support that person becoming homeless.

The three legal aid groups have created a settlement fund of one-time assistance of $1,500 for their clients facing eviction. The money will go directly to the landlords.

The organizations have secured settlement dollars from TD Bank and are in negotiations with New Castle County and the city of Wilmington. While the TD Bank can be used to help tenants across the state, money from New Castle County and Wilmington would only be for residents of those areas.

But for tenants across the state who don’t qualify for the right to representation programs, it can be a daunting search for rental assistance, which can be used for back rent and upcoming rent payments. A broader federal emergency rental assistance program ended last fall, which had been providing relief to Delaware families since the pandemic.

“There is no robust state program,” Rhine said. “The nonprofits right now are all facing [a] financial crisis. If you are behind a few thousand dollars in your rent, there is not an organization in the state that’s able to help you to catch up.”