Eviction reforms have focused to varying degrees on 1. unclogging court dockets 2. reducing costs of litigation to property owners 3. increasing capacity of tenants to raise defenses 4. ease family transitions when displacement is inevitable.
Three different approaches to eviction reform.
Cleveland Tenants offers
an eviction diversion program
that reaches out to tenants by mail before the hearings. ED was
envisioned as a triage center where tenants' situations could be
assessed for possible legal defense (061b for instance),
or mediation, or rapid rehousing interventions.
Legal service organizations and/or law student
legal associations have experimented with on site counseling for tenants
who show up at eviction court. The idea was to do a quick triage and
equip the tenants with enough information to mount a pro se defense.
I'm pretty sure that none of these initiatives is still around in Ohio,
but It might be worth doing some on line snooping.
community mediation service in
Columbus offers an on site alternative dispute resolution (ADR)
service. ADR was big in the past decade...not so much now. the nice
thing about ADR is that there's some 'official' support for the
idea...if not the reality of using ADR to keep minor disputes out of
court. The real world downside of this is that it means re thinking
some legacy systems that are currently filling the lunch pails of court
employees and lawyers.
