In addition to creating additional affordable-housing opportunities, the City is investing in helping to keep people in their homes.

Using American Rescue Plan Act funding, the City awarded $400,000 to Northeast Legal Aid to provide legal assistance to Lynn households at risk of eviction. The goal of the project is to expand the number of clients served by providing free legal aid, enable residents to remain in their current housing, and educate residents on tenant rights.

As of November, Northeast Legal Aid had served 98 clients, providing a variety of services, including intake, paralegal and attorney, tenants’ rights information, and emergency representation. The services are offered in multiple languages.

“As we continue working to increase affordable-housing opportunities in the city, it is also critical that we help people remain in their existing housing,” Mayor Jared Nicholson said. “Through this partnership with Northeast Legal Aid, residents are provided critical legal services that will help them avoid eviction.”

Northeast Legal Aid gave an example of one such case, a 58-year-old person disabled by blindness since 2021. The landlord of the elderly and disabled subsidized housing development came to the residence, changed the locks, and called police to remove the blind resident from the apartment and arrest him. Northeast Legal Aid intervened and was able to help the police assess the situation. The police left the residence without arresting the tenant.

The landlord then took legal action, asking that the Housing Court rule that the tenant was a trespasser and order his removal. Northeast Legal Aid, this time after a Housing Court trial, persuaded the court that the tenant was not an illegal trespasser. The landlord then filed an eviction case against the tenant’s elderly mother, the original resident in the apartment, and the tenant was allowed to be part of this case. After a four-day trial in August, the jury found that the landlord’s illegal lock-out and other actions violated the tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment, allowing the tenant to remain in the residence.

“Without legal representation, this tenant almost certainly would have been evicted and in danger of homelessness,” said Danya Smith, policy director for the mayor’s office and the point person on the Northeast Legal Aid partnership. “Northeast Legal Aid is playing a valuable role in helping people remain in their residences.”

The majority of the cases in which Northeast Legal Aid has provided representation have involved private housing, but also include federal subsidized housing and other public housing.