MASSACHUSETTS TENANTS FACING eviction proceedings usually walk through the courthouse doors at a stark disadvantage. In 2024, just 4.3 percent came with a lawyer, while their landlords had attorneys in 90 percent of cases.

A state program launched two years ago is trying to level that imbalance. Unlike in criminal cases, where every defendant is entitled to a lawyer regardless of ability to pay, eviction proceedings are civil cases with no such guarantees.

Advocates waged an eight-year campaign for public funding of legal counsel for low-income tenants, which finally found life as a limited pilot program in the state’s 2025 budget. But attorneys and advocates who work in housing courts say the program is operating against a backdrop that keeps getting worse: a housing crisis showing little sign of improvement, persistently high eviction filings, and a Legislature that has so far only been willing to fund the Access to Counsel Program year to year without making it permanent law.

The Legislature first appropriated $2.5 million in the fiscal year 2025 budget to launch the program as a pilot, administered by the nonprofit Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation. This cycle, Gov. Maura Healey has again proposed $2.5 million, and the House Ways and Means Committee has recommended $3 million, while MLAC is asking for $4 million.

“We need a lot more money, because even $3 million is not nearly enough for what the need is,” said Erin Van Pelt, MLAC’s director of communications.

More than 38,000 eviction cases were filed in Massachusetts in 2023, up from roughly 23,000 in 2021. Betsy Soule, executive director of MetroWest Legal Services, one of six regional legal aid organizations representing tenants contracted under the program, told legislators in November that five years ago her organization turned away about 65 percent of people who sought help. With increased state funding, that figure has dropped to about 45 percent.

Representation under the program is limited to households with incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty line – $41,250 annually for a family of four or $19,950 for an individual in 2026.

Attorneys say this means they focus on those with the most to lose, like public housing tenants, holders of Section 8 and other mobile vouchers, and tenants facing eviction by large-scale private landlords. For those with a Section 8 voucher, the stakes are especially high, because a judge finding a serious lease violation can mean losing not just the apartment but the subsidy too.

“If you’re evicted from public housing, for all intents and purposes, a family will never have a chance to get back to it because the wait lists will be so long,” said Daniel Daley, a senior housing attorney at MetroWest Legal Services. The “double whammy,” he said – losing both housing and subsidy simultaneously – is what makes these cases so dire.

The Access to Counsel program funds full legal representation for the low-income clients, which means seeing them through eviction cases from a first notice from a landlord of eviction proceedings through trial if needed.

That continuity matters in ways that are often invisible, Daley said. Once placed on an eviction case, attorneys could identify procedural defects in a landlord’s first move to evict a tenant, connect tenants to rental assistance programs, and stop them from signing agreements they cannot honor.

“I’ve seen tenants agree to a repayment plan that exceeds their income,” Daley said. They “promise more than they can possibly do because they want to get through the process with the chance to stay in their homes.”

The counsel program lives and dies with each budget cycle, meaning a tight budget year could leave legal aid groups without this dedicated extra pot of money, and there is no consistency to how it is applied. Bills have been filed to enshrine the counsel program in state law, but lawmakers have not indicated the effort is a priority when they can just fund the program year over year.

Annette Duke, a housing attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute who led the campaign for state funding of legal counsel for tenants, told the Judiciary Committee last year that codifying the program in law matters for more than just giving it stability. A bill would require designated organizations to have substantial expertise in landlord-tenant law, mandate multilingual outreach, and authorize contracting with private attorneys to expand capacity in underserved areas. The budget line item requires none of that.

The House bill that would have codified the program in state law was sent to study by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary in March, shelving it for this session. The companion Senate bill remains before Senate Ways and Means.

“It is something we need to fight for year over year,” Van Pelt said. “If they wanted to cut the line item, they could.”

The access to counsel effort is one of several tenant protection measures in various stages of debate at the State House, including a tenant’s bill of rights. An eviction record sealing provision that took effect in May 2025 allows tenants to petition courts to remove certain filings from their records. Each initiative addresses a different pressure point in a housing system that advocates describe as structurally tilted against low-income renters.

And the housing crisis that sends tenants to court in the first place shows little sign of resolving. A state housing needs assessment notes that eviction rates have rebounded since the pandemic moratorium.

At the same time, prices continue rising. In the Greater Boston area, average rents began spiking as the COVID-19 pandemic waned in 2022. The average rent in mid-April 2022 was about $1,800, according to rental tracker BostonPads, and is now about $2,300.

As much as tenant advocates have welcomed the state program, it doesn’t come close to providing funding for all low-income tenants facing eviction. A 2020 Boston Bar Association report estimated that while a full statewide program would cost $26 million annually, it would generate $63 million in savings to the Commonwealth through reduced shelter costs, health care utilization, and court burden. The bar association testified in favor of a funding increase during this budget cycle.

No organized opposition to the Access to Counsel Program has emerged publicly. MassLandlords, the state’s main landlord advocacy organization, has not taken a formal position against it.

Emotions run high in eviction cases, tenants and advocates say. Renee Spencer is a public housing tenant and advocate in Wellesley who told the Judiciary Committee that she was evicted from public housing about 12 years ago after the housing authority refused a $500 cash payment she brought to court. She spent four years couch-surfing and believes the eviction was retaliation for her tenant organizing work. The property’s leasing manager, she said, posted “another one bites the dust” on Facebook the afternoon of the court date.

“No one should have to face eviction alone,” Spencer told the committee.

Daley, the MetroWest Legal Services lawyer, said the program has been a game-changer. He said more funding would be great, but right now advocates are focused on making sure the initiative survives.

“Without programs like this, you’re going back to the way it was, where maybe 5 percent of unrepresented tenants are having a good outcome and the other 95 percent are not,” Daley said. “Not because they don’t have a good case, but because they weren’t able to explain it well enough to the court.”