November 22, 2024

What brings a tenant to housing court and what happens once they’re there? We ask housing attorney Angelina Morisi

BY Claire O'CallahanThe Berkshire Eagle

On Wednesday mornings, when my schedule allows, I park at the north end of Wendell Avenue and walk to the Central Berkshire District Court.

Every week, from 8:30 a.m. until early afternoon, the Western Housing Court holds session there.

When I arrive, just shy of 9 a.m., the hall is lined with landlords, tenants and attorneys. Some are from Pittsfield, others have traveled the 30-minute car drive or hour-plus bus trip from Great Barrington or North Adams.

I file to the back of the courtroom and spend the next few hours listening to case after case. It’s at housing court, where I watch mothers cry because they and their ill child are about to be evicted and listen to landlords speak to their own financial strain, that this beat I cover becomes personal.

For this installment of our housing Q&A, I sat down with Angelina Morisi, a housing attorney at Community Legal Aid to talk about legal representation in housing court.

Community Legal Aid provides free civil legal aid to low-income people, seniors and people experiencing housing discrimination who live in the five counties of Central and Western Massachusetts.

Here are Morisi’s thoughts on what brings people to housing court and what inequities in legal representation they face once there.

THE EAGLE: Can you share a little about yourself and your housing story?

MORISI: I went to law school out in Colorado at the University of Denver. I knew that I was really interested in public interest law, so being a lawyer for some public interest purpose and that’s why I went to law school.

I grew up in Western Massachusetts, so after living in Colorado for a while I really wanted to come back here. So being able to work at a place like Community Legal Aid that does really great public interest work and also be in Western Massachusetts that seemed like a really great fit.

Community Legal Aid has a lot of service areas, but housing really called to me. I have volunteered with a lot of homeless shelters throughout high school and college and into adulthood, so housing issues were first in my brain as something that would be really interesting to work with.

THE EAGLE: For those who may be unfamiliar, what is Community Legal Aid?

MORISI: To answer that question we have to take a step back and look at why legal organizations like CLA exist in the first place. Readers may or may not know that the sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that everyone who’s been accused of a crime gets the right to a lawyer. That’s why public defenders exist.

That’s only for criminal defendants. People who have serious civil issues — so legal issues that are not related to them being prosecuted by the government for a crime — don’t have the right to an attorney. So people who can’t afford to hire a private attorney to help them with whatever civil issue they may have, like a housing issue or a divorce or education issues, you’re just on your own. And a lot of times, the opposing side will be represented by a lawyer. That creates some unfairness and unbalance in the system. So legal organizations like CLA are here to fill that gap.

So we’re lawyers and advocates representing low-income and elderly clients that can’t afford to hire a private attorney in their civil legal cases and all the services we provide are free.

THE EAGLE: What are the benefits of having access to legal counsel and what can happen when people don’t it?

MORISI: So knowing deadlines, knowledge of court procedure and of course knowing what kind of defenses may be available. People may have an idea of some things that are going wrong in a tenancy, for example, and say, “Well I don’t have any heat, isn’t that worth something? Shouldn’t I bring that up?” But there are many, many other things that they might not be aware of because they’re not lawyers so why would they be aware of those things? So having a lawyer who is aware of all of the defenses that you could possibly raise, all of the strategy that you could possibly use, if there is anything wrong with the notice that you were given or the procedure that has happened so far, individual people might not be able to pick those things out and a lawyer would be able to pick those things out. It could end up getting your case dismissed, it could be used for negotiations. It’s just more of an insight into how that world works that people who aren’t in that world, because they don’t work there, wouldn’t have. So it can be really really helpful.

THE EAGLE: When it comes to housing, when do people find themselves in a position where they need legal representation?

MORISI: I generally see people who are facing an eviction, so their landlord wants them out for one reason or another. It could be for an alleged nonpayment of rent, because the landlord is saying they’ve violated the lease or it could be for no reason at all, which a landlord is allowed to do in Massachusetts.

We also work with people who have government subsidies. For readers who don’t know what that is, someone who’s living at a certain percent below or at the poverty limit could qualify to have the government help them make rent so that they are able to actually have a home and not having to be homeless. Everyone knows rent is very expensive, for someone who doesn’t have enough income to be able to pay for their rent, there are programs where the government can help them out in paying rent. And if you’re part of one of those programs and you’re going to lose it, so the government is saying “I’m sorry, I’m not going to help you anymore,” you also have rights to try to prevent that from happening. So we see tenants in those situations, as well.

THE EAGLE: For people experiencing housing instability and homelessness, what legal services does CLA offer?

MORISI: We run the lawyer-for-the-day program, so we always have at least one lawyer at the housing court at its session in Pittsfield on Wednesdays. We’ll be there to answer any tenant questions for really any tenant who’s there. It could be a tenant who’s there for an eviction, it could be a tenant who’s trying to file a case against their landlord for something. And we’d be able to give just day-of advice. It’s not full representation; just day-of advice.

In addition to that, we do also offer actual representation on cases. So we’re not just giving advice or stepping in for the day, but actually representing the person through the beginning of the eviction all the way through to the end.

THE EAGLE: What does legal representation look like in housing court?

MORISI: Most landlords are represented. Occasionally there are cases where landlords aren’t represented, but for the most part landlords do have attorneys. Some tenants have attorneys, most of them do not. It’s very, very imbalanced in the housing court. So that’s our place to step in and be representing people.