STAGE 2, CONCEPT 3 | Table of Contents
Honing Your Message
What message are you sending when you discuss tenants, eviction rates, housing stability, housing justice, and eviction RTC? Which supportive arguments for eviction RTC resonate with your advocacy? On this page, we’ve outlined important considerations when building the narrative around eviction RTC.
Messaging Tips
Keep your message adaptable based on the audience.
As outlined in Section 1.3, there are many strong arguments in support of eviction RTC, but not everyone will want or need the same information. Your message may shift depending on who you're making your argument to. For example:
A tenant organizer might request more information about how eviction RTC can be a tenant-power building tool or how it connects to a broader housing justice goal.
A legal services program in NYC will likely have different questions about staffing and capacity-building than a provider serving rural Kansas. And even if they're in the same jurisdiction, one legal services provider may align more with messaging about the transformational power of eviction RTC for systems, tenants, and communities, while another is focused on the sustained funding eviction RTC can bring to their organization.
A policymaker might need cost/benefit projections or tenant outcomes from similar jurisdictions.
Remember that eviction RTC is a culture shift, and you might have to do more convincing than you think.
Eviction RTC is a culture shift not only for tenants, but for landlords, attorneys, courts, and governments:
It shifts away from a model where a tenant’s access to counsel depends not on their need or request but entirely on factors like the availability of funding and the merit-based decision making by legal services providers.
It shifts from a model where courts and landlords rarely see tenant lawyers to one where tenants are systemically represented.
It concentrates government funding on one particular type of tenant reform.
The culture shift for legal aid is addressed further in Section 4.1.
Because of this, be prepared to experience resistance or opposition even from those organizations or people you'd least expect it from. We’ve come across scenarios where tenant organizers want to advance eviction RTC but legal aid programs have concerns, or legal service providers want to advance eviction RTC but tenant organizers prefer to advance a different housing policy. In those instances you might need to ask more questions, recalibrate your message depending on the issues your opposition presents, or identify gaps in your message that you need to address (such as by finding additional tenant stories, or identifying more eviction-related data points). But also, at some point, you may determine that the opposition requires you to adjust your eviction RTC timeline or determine that the person or organization in opposition may just not have to be on board.
Even one powerful story can make a difference.
In Connecticut, a very public eviction case (during COVID and the winter) helped create support for RTC. The case had a lot of media attention and helped to spur weekly phone banks, one-pagers, organizing trainings, and tenant testimonies.
Create an eviction RTC elevator pitch.
This is a version of your message about eviction RTC that you can tell quickly. For example:
RTC ensures tenants have an attorney when their shelter, and by extension every other basic human need, is in jeopardy.
RTC helps tenants realize their goals with dignity, whether those goals are remaining in the unit they are facing eviction from, moving, or something else.
RTC helps tenants actually use existing laws enacted for their protections (ex: just cause eviction, emergency rental assistance, existing procedural and substantive defenses, etc).
RTC is a proven, tested policy that already works in 25 jurisdictions nationwide.
RTC can help address some of the power imbalances between renter-workers and landlords.
RTC moves jurisdictions closer to providing more equitable housing outcomes for all of its tenants, since evictions so disproportionately affect Black women with children.
Don’t perpetuate negative narratives.
Rather, focus on the future that eviction RTC can help bring about - one where everyone has a home and evictions are not necessary. Read more about dominant narratives that can harm right to counsel advocacy in Building Support for a Civil Right to Counsel by Anchoring Your Case in Racial Justice. For example, when discussing the costs and economic benefits of eviction RTC, resist the narrative that resources are scarce and the housing justice community must make hard choices. The fight is less about how many resources there are and more about how governments choose to use what they have. Should governments continue to only spend money on dealing with the aftereffects of evictions (shelters, arrests of unhoused people, etc.), or should they be spending some on preventative measures like eviction RTC?
Don’t underestimate how many prior negative narratives you have to overcome.
As one advocate put it, “Messaging around RTC is very difficult because the public has the assumption of guilt [that the tenants deserve to be evicted] so they tried to counter that, which presented problems - the voting public was reluctant to identify with/relate to the tenants getting evicted.”
KEY RESOURCES
MESSAGING FRAMING IN EVICTION RTC
Dr. Tiffany Manuel, the Founder and CEO of The Case Made, talked with us on a 15-minute webinar about messaging framing in the world of eviction RTC. Check it out!
BIPARTISAN SUPPORT FOR EVICTION RTC
In 2021, Data for Progress and The Appeal conducted polling showing that “81 percent of voters—including 87 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents, and 70 percent of Republicans—support[ed] a right to counsel for eviction proceedings.” This data shows there is bipartisan support nationally and can be a useful talking point!
“When every tenant has the right to counsel, no family will ever be evicted in less than a 15-minute proceeding.”
– Laura Hughes, The Words We Use Shape Our Reality: How We Tell Stories is Critical to Building Our Housing Futures