photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Cassandra Barrett speaks at the County Commission meeting on Wednesday, August 20, 2025.

As Douglas County leaders are hearing more about protections for tenants — including an upcoming discussion about tenants’ right to counsel programs — a group of local housing advocates have already started making their case.

On Wednesday, half a dozen members of the group Lawrence Tenants spoke at the Douglas County Commission’s meeting, urging the commissioners to implement a tenants’ right to counsel program. The commission didn’t respond to the comments, which took place during the general public comment period of the meeting, but it is scheduled to discuss the issue of tenants’ right to counsel at a work session on Sept. 3, along with Lawrence Tenants and Kansas Holistic Defenders.

Right to counsel programs guarantee legal representation for renters facing eviction, and Gabi Sprague, a member of Lawrence Tenants, told the commission that they also make financial sense for local governments. She cited an estimate from the financial advisory firm Stout that said that for every dollar spent on a tenant’s right to counsel, the administering state, city or county saves between $3 and $6.

“We have no reason to believe that our community would be any different,” Sprague said. “In part, this is because keeping people in their homes saves money.”

Another Lawrence Tenants member, Cassandra Barrett, said a right to counsel program would greatly benefit tenants at the highest risk of eviction, such as single moms and disabled renters. She also said that more than half of evicted households include a child.

“We know that evictions are associated with developmental breaks in children, decreased scholastic performance, increased school absence and disciplinary actions,” Barrett said. “Eviction is a traumatic event for a child.”

Barrett said a right to counsel program would make neighborhoods more stable, improve renters’ well-being and reduce their stress. She added that some of the people who are most likely to get evicted are also the least likely to be able to afford a lawyer or have the ability to defend themselves in court.

“Landlords are much less likely to file these various evictions if they know they’re going to face a tenant’s lawyer in court,” Barrett said.

The comments from Lawrence Tenants came after commissioners heard from several local agencies about eviction prevention initiatives that are already taking place in Douglas County. The commission had asked for this discussion as a follow-up to its budget conversations in July, and it gave commissioners an opportunity to ask local agencies more questions about what services they already provide.

Three groups that were briefing the commission — Douglas County District Court Self-Help Center, Kansas Holistic Defenders and Kansas Legal Services — all have provided tenants with legal representation or assistance representing themselves. In materials provided ahead of the commission’s discussion, Kansas Holistic Defenders said it had 59 cases where it represented a tenant and the matter was “dismissed or decided substantially in favor of the tenant,” and Kansas Legal Services said that through the Self-Help Center it had provided help to 11 households facing eviction.

But the commission also received information about programs that haven’t been implemented in Douglas County, including the broader idea of a tenants’ right to counsel program. They received a memo from Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health that highlighted the tenants’ right to counsel program in Kansas City, Missouri, which began a few years ago. The data from Kansas City showed that out of 2,042 cases that received legal representation there, 82% of them were resolved without an eviction ruling.

Wednesday’s work session was for informational purposes only, but the topic of tenants’ right to counsel will get more discussion from the commissioners next month. The calendar of upcoming work sessions in County Administrator Sarah Plinsky’s regular report shows that a conversation on the issue will take place on Sept. 3, and Sprague said that her group and Kansas Holistic Defenders would both take part in that.

There were no regular agenda items on the agenda for Wednesday’s business meeting.