Tenant’s rights bill passed Delaware House

DOVER, Del. – A measure to guarantee the right to an attorney for tenants in eviction court has passed the Delaware House and now heads back to the Senate for a finalizing vote.

The measure establishes a grant system to help legal aid groups help tenants represent their cases in court, in a system that sees landlords have lawyers 84 percent of the time, and less than 5 percent for tenants.

During a rally in favor of the bill Tuesday, Delaware ACLU Director Mike Brickner highlighted the differences that allowed this bill to pass where similar efforts failed last year, including an amendment to carve out smaller landlords from the law.

“People who live in rent and rental properties where the landlord owns three or fewer properties, those tenants would not qualify under it and that’s essentially something that was asked for to help kind of protect smaller landlords,” Brickner said adding that the exception would be dropped if the smaller tenants did decide to bring an attorney to represent them to court.

The bill also created a training program for the state supreme court to allow non-attorneys to be able to help with the eviction caseload.

The fiscal note for the bill is set at nearly 1 million dollars for the first year.