Cincinnati officials announced a new resource for renters Thursday. The Tenants’ Guide includes information on leases, evictions, how to get rent and utility assistance, and rights and responsibilities of renters and landlords.
Council Member Meeka Owens has been working on the Tenants’ Guide for the past few years.
"Through this engagement process, we've also centered the voices of housing providers because this is not an environment where we want to point the finger and blame, but we want to build community together," Owens said.
The guide will be available at the courthouse Help Center, where renters facing eviction can get advice and sometimes even limited legal representation. It will also be available through Cincinnati Public Schools, Hamilton County’s 513 Relief Bus, and is online. See a copy below [article continues after]:
It includes information about rent escrow, the process where a renter can legally withhold rent if the landlord fails to keep the property habitable. West End resident Jackie Williams says her evictions could have been avoided if she'd had this resource.
"I have woken up to me and my kids walking in puddles of water, flushing the toilet and the stuff coming from the toilet to the sink; losing furniture, beds, clothes," Williams said. "If I would have known about escrow, I would have put my money in there instead of leaving. And having evictions on my record [makes it] kind of hard finding a place."
Rebeka Beach is manager for Project Connect at Cincinnati Public Schools. She says last school year, the district identified more than 4,300 students experiencing homelessness.
"In the beginning stages of creating this document, we did have some focus groups, one of them at the Bethany House Shelter," Beach said. "We met with 28 parents that night who read through the document and shared that if they had had this information and known their rights, they often would not have been evicted and ended up in a homeless situation."
Council Member Owens says she’s exploring the possibility of requiring landlords to provide a copy of the Tenants’ Guide to new renters, like how landlords are required to provide a disclosure about lead paint. State law makes that complicated and may prevent it altogether.
The guide is part of a larger city effort to prevent evictions and homelessness. It also includes the Access to Counsel program, which provides some tenants facing eviction with same-day legal representation. The program launched in September; since then, attorney Shannon Price has appeared in court 379 times to represent clients, and about 83% of cases that have been litigated to final judgement were dismissed.
