In late October, the DC Bar Foundation released a biannual report on the Civil Legal Counsel Projects Program (CLCPP) covering the period from January 1 to June 30, 2022. This timeframe is significant because the District’s eviction moratorium ended in January 2022.
CLCPP is a grant program established by the Expanding Access to Justice Amendment Act enacted by the Council of the District of Columbia in July 2017. Grants are administered by the DC Bar Foundation and awarded to legal services organizations in the District of Columbia to provide legal assistance to DC residents with low incomes who are facing or at risk of eviction proceedings or the loss of a housing subsidy.
During the reporting period:
Landlords were allowed to file an eviction complaint for any alleged lease violation. The CLCPP partners worked on 1,311 cases, assisting 1,113 clients and impacting 2,221 household members. These numbers are almost as high as pre-pandemic levels – even with the recently-enacted tenant protections in place, including restrictions on when landlords could seek an eviction, strengthened notice requirements, and more time for the tenant to respond to the eviction or vacate the rental unit.
Across the 261 eviction cases with outcome data, 228 (87%) tenants retained possession of the unit and reverted to the landlord in 33 (13%) cases. This result is encouraging and is higher than the percentage of cases from all the prior periods that ended with tenant possession (77%).
You can read the full report at this link.
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