As Mayor Bill de Blasio prepares to sign a bill to ensure that all tenants in housing court have legal counsel, several other cities are moving forward with their own programs to provide poor litigants in civil cases with legal assistance.
De Blasio is scheduled on Friday to sign a bill that, while not establishing a per se right to counsel for litigants in the city’s housing court, commits the city to steadily increasing the city’s current investment of about $72 million to $155 million over five years.
