04.30.2025 By Sylvie Sturm  | Full article published; https://www.sfpublicpress.org/eviction-rates-in-sf-soar-as-legal-aid-faces-deep-funding-cuts/

Aid groups’ attorneys beg City Hall not to pull support for extremely low-income residents on the brink of homelessness.

San Francisco is experiencing a surge in eviction court filings that has taken even the most seasoned eviction defense lawyers by surprise.

“I’ve been doing eviction defense work for a lot of years,” said Ora Prochovnick, director of litigation and policy at Eviction Defense Collaborative, “and I’ve never seen people as deep in the hole as they are on the rent, and they are getting evicted for that reason.”

In February, 365 eviction lawsuits were filed — up 57% from a year earlier — and March had 303 filings, bringing the total for this year to 929, Prochovnick said.

At this pace, San Francisco is on track to seeing more than 3,700 eviction lawsuits this year, versus 2,923 cases filed in 2024, according to the Tenant Right to Counsel, which was established in 2018, when San Francisco passed the “No Eviction Without Representation Act,” requiring the city to fund legal representation for residents facing eviction.

Prochovnick said the vast majority of cases are over non-payment, with some tenants owing back rent in the tens of thousands of dollars.

“Legally, COVID is over. Politically, COVID is over. But in people’s real life experiences, it’s not,” Prochovnick said. “We are entering a new, painful period of what’s going on with our economy, because of a combination of COVID and escalating rents, and people are just getting deeper and deeper.”

But the rate of eviction is expected to increase even further in the wake of a city budget proposal to cut funding to legal aid for extremely low-income residents. The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development says it must propose cuts to help make up for the city’s $1 billion budget deficit.

“We have had to make difficult decisions,” Anne Stanley, communications manager for the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, wrote in an emailed statement. “We will continue to work closely with all of our partners to make sure communities across the city have access to the resources they need.”

The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development budget proposal includes funding for the Tenant Right to Counsel, through which nine legal defense organizations represent people facing eviction, and for homelessness prevention related to domestic violence and immigration legal services.

But in March, the office proposed eliminating the entire general civil legal services category, which totaled $4.2 million last year. This category includes programs that help people with extremely low income navigate complex subsidy programs and maintain benefits from sources like CalWORKs, Social Security Insurance and housing assistance.

They also help clients receive outstanding child support, reduce wage garnishment, and defend against informal evictions, predatory debt collection and credit report errors — all of which have a direct correlation to the ability to pay rent and homelessness prevention, said Laura Chiera, executive director and managing attorney at Legal Assistance to the Elderly.

“You need a lawyer to help you unwind all of these things,” Chiera said. “It’s like two steps away from homelessness as opposed to being evicted.”

Seven nonprofits might be affected: Open Door Legal, Bay Area Legal Aid, the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Asian Law Caucus, Legal Assistance to the Elderly, Legal Link and AIDS Legal Referral Panel.

Attorneys for the organizations are urging the city not to cut the funding, saying it will only lead to more spending since the estimated cost incurred by the city when a person becomes homeless is $62,000 per year.

“I appreciate that they’re putting a focus on homelessness prevention,” Chiera said. “I almost think it was an oversight to not really realize that these other civil legal services are also homelessness prevention.”

Bay Area Legal Aid is slated to lose $600,000 for general civil defense, which last year went toward 550 cases related to economic stability for extremely low-income residents. The money also funded bimonthly consumer rights clinics in the Mission District and at the San Francisco Law Library, said Raegan Joern, managing attorney for Bay Area Legal Aid’s San Francisco office.

Joern said those cases resulted in an average financial return of more than $3,200 per case for their clients.

“If you compare that to a CalWORKs grant for a family of four, it’s around $1,400 a month. So that’s over two months of income,” Joern said. “So that directly correlates to ability to pay rent, ability to fix your car so you can maintain your job, to pay for childcare.”

Decreased capacity for legal aid is expected to add to the already soaring eviction rate, said Prochovnick, so even the flat funding proposed for the Tenant Right to Counsel will be insufficient, since that initiative can support only 2,500 cases per year.

The Tenant Right to Counsel has a 93% rate of keeping clients housed. From July 2023 to June 2024, it kept people in 1,539 households from becoming homeless — 80% of them extremely low income. The city saved about $66 million by spending $6,300 on average per eviction lawsuit, according to the Tenant Right to Counsel.

Maria Antonia was one such client. Legal Assistance to the Elderly helped Antonia when her landlord was harassing her and issuing eviction notices even though she has a rent subsidy, said Jessica Juarez, an eviction defense fellow at Legal Assistance to the Elderly.

The subsidy had been delayed because the landlord was not fixing serious mold buildup that drew a negative inspection notice. The San Francisco Housing Authority doesn’t fund units that are not up to code. Antonia reached out to Legal Assistance to the Elderly, which sent the landlord a letter.

“That’s when, all of a sudden, the landlord decided to fix things,” Juarez said.

Antonia said the help saved her from homelessness.

“I would already be out on the street if I hadn’t had the support of the organization and all the people who do this work,” she said, speaking Spanish. “Because it’s not just one person, it’s several, right? And I was one of those who received that support, that service, and the kindness with which they’ve treated me. It makes me feel good to have someone I can turn to.”

Prochovnick said everyone should care about this issue whether or not they have felt threatened with eviction.

“If I’m in San Francisco because I value the diversity and tolerance and beauty of this city, it’s not going to be the city I want to live in if we don’t have old people and young people and low-income folks and people of color and families with kids,” Prochovnick said. “So, we need to keep them in our city if we want the city to be what we think it has been.”

Funding recommendations from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development will be considered as part of the mayor’s proposed budget, which is to be released by June 1. The Board of Supervisors is expected to propose adjustments and adopt a final budget by  early August. 

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CORRECTION 5-2-25: Bay Area Legal Aid holds bimonthly consumer rights clinics in the Mission District and at the San Francisco Law Library. A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the library location.