Editor’s Note: This story was reported by students in the University of Connecticut’s investigative journalism class, led by Professor Mike Stanton, a veteran former Providence Journal reporter, and by Day Staff Writer Greg Smith. The student journalists are: Wyatt Cote, Faith Greenberg, Hudson Kamphausen, Jake Kelly and Meredith Veilleux.

An eviction is like a ticking clock.

From the moment a landlord files a “notice to quit” ― giving a tenant three days to move out or face legal action ― it’s a race against time. And tenants run that race through a legal minefield, where one wrong step can determine whether they’re able to keep a roof over their head.

“The system is stacked against people who don’t know the rules,” says New London Superior Court Judge Francis Foley III. “The rules are generous to the landlord.”

Connecticut last year became the second state in the nation with a program designed to correct “the power imbalance between rental property owners and tenants in evictions proceedings,” according to a December consultant’s report to the Connecticut Bar Foundation.

For years, housing advocates have long called for reforms to address Connecticut’s chronic affordable housing shortage, and related issues, like the fact that the most tenants go into evictions cases unfamiliar with the process and without a lawyer to guide them.

But in 2021, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state legislature passed a law providing legal assistance to low-income tenants facing eviction. Washington was the first state in the country with a “right to counsel” program; New York City also has one.

“The pandemic really was the tipping point for bringing this issue to the forefront,” says Natalie Wagner, former executive director of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, which administers the program. “We’re not merely providing tenants with counsel. We’re also trying to change the culture and educate landlords about tenants’ rights ― that there are other means of addressing circumstances where tenants find themselves unable to pay.”

The challenges are great. The program rolled out in February 2022, just as Gov. Ned Lamont’s pandemic moratorium on evictions was lifted and a $400 million federal emergency rental assistance program, UniteCT, was ending.

Meanwhile, rising rents and inflation were hitting low-income tenants and creating incentives for landlords to force them out in favor of higher-paying tenants.

In New London County, which encompasses courts in Norwich and New London, evictions cases last year climbed to 1,681, higher than the pre-pandemic average of 1,500 cases from 2017 to 2019. That tracks the statewide increase of 15 to 20%.

For the six years from 2017 through 2022, New London County had the third-highest eviction rate in the state, behind New Haven and Hartford counties.

Most of the people who face eviction are single mothers, minorities and the poor. Among clients who obtained legal assistance in New London County over the past year through Connecticut’s new Right to Counsel, or RTC, program, two-thirds were women, 37% African-American, 32% white and 21% Hispanic; 47% were disabled. Statewide, 64% were unemployed, and most of the rest worked just part-time.

Due to a difficulty in hiring lawyers, the RTC program in its first year was limited to the 15 Connecticut zip codes with the highest evictions rates, including New London’s 06320. Those neighborhoods, including several in Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, represent 29% of the 23,000 evictions cases in Connecticut in 2022. The program, funded through 2024, hopes to expand as it hires more lawyers.

In those ZIP codes, the RTC program more than doubled the number of tenants with legal representation from 6 to 14%. In New London, two lawyers with the non-profit Connecticut Legal Services represented tenants in 115 of the more than 500 evictions cases there. Overall, in the 15 targeted ZIP codes, CLS has handled 1,945 cases through January.

The results have been encouraging. Of the 304 tenants who said they wanted to prevent an involuntary move, RTC lawyers were able to help 71% avoid eviction. They were also able to help 76% prevent an eviction judgment ― which is important because having an eviction case on your record, even if you prevail, can make it harder to find a new apartment.

“Tenants want to avoid that scarlet letter,” says Wagner.

That’s where the ticking clock can be an obstacle. When a landlord files a “notice to quit,” the tenant has just three days to move out ― afterwards, the landlord can file a formal eviction complaint that goes on their record.

Connecticut is one of 16 states with a 3-day notice period. So even if a tenant can quickly connect with an RTC lawyer, it’s hard to respond in time to head off an eviction filing in court.

Furthermore, once a case is filed, a tenant unaware of the process, or unable to take time off work to go to court, can find themselves losing the case by default because they didn’t respond or show up. That makes it harder for a lawyer to advocate for them.

Under the new RTC law, the notice to quit must include a flyer notifying tenants that they may be eligible for free legal representation. The flyer, in English and Spanish, includes a hotline (800-559-1565) and website: www.EvictionHelpCt.org. Even those who don’t qualify based on their income, or don’t live in one of the targeted zip codes, are finding useful information through those resources to help them navigate the process.

“The eviction process moves particularly fast for unrepresented tenants who do not file an appearance and answer with the court,” says a December 2022 report to the Connecticut Bar Associaton by independent consultant Stout Risius Ross LLC on the first year of the Connecticut RTC program. Some tenants can lose their case in as few as seven days.

Conversely, a tenant who files a response too soon, without understanding the implications, can limit the legal options for a lawyer who later joins the case.

“If a client files their own answer, it limits our ability to be as creative as possible early on, and it also expedites the scheduling of hearings,” says Tom Albin, a Connecticut Legal Services lawyer in New London.

If Albin can get to a client at the start, the first thing he’ll do is file motions to “flesh out” details that could give a client an advantage. For instance, if there’s a written lease, he’ll ask to see it. Once he gets the lease, he can detect any flaws that could be the basis for more motions ― such as the landlord not giving a tenant the required grace period to make a missed rent payment before starting an eviction case.

That can buy a tenant more time and help lead to a negotiated settlement with the landlord.

“We do what we can, try to help our people,” says Albin. “They’re disadvantaged people having a difficult time finding new housing ... Ideally, we’re trying to get them to stay, or find a better housing situation.”

Mary Conklin, managing attorney of Connecticut Legal Services’ housing unit, says that “most of our clients don’t wind up in shelters ― they’re moving in with families, doubling up, moving out of state.”

Even with a lawyer, tenants are operating in an antiquated system designed to dispose of cases swiftly.

“The historical use of summary proceedings for evictions was focused solely on removing a tenant from a property, and reverting possession back to the property owner,” says the report to the Connecticut Bar Foundation by the consulting firm Stout. “Eviction proceedings do not conform to modern housing needs or circumstances, but “are a vestige of the 18th and 19th centuries when there were no housing codes, subsidies, rent regulations or complex rental housing market dynamics.”

In preparing the report, the consultants interviewed landlords and identified one possible solution ― a program to head off eviction lawsuits with a “pre-filing eviction diversion, mediation and sustained emergency rental assistance ... to promptly resolve cases.”

Another problem with the current system: it’s hard for tenants facing eviction for nonpayment or an expired lease to raise issues concerning defective conditions, such as a lack of heat, plumbing issues, mold or pest infestations. While 59% of RTC clients reported defective conditions, most tenants don’t realize that they need to keep paying their rent to have a better chance of convincing the judge.

“The landlord is looking for them to mess up so they can move them out,” says Natalia Planell, the other Connecticut Legal Services lawyer in New London.