On a typical weekday morning in Brooklyn housing court, there are lines of people just to get into a courtroom. People are pressed so close together you can hear tenants grousing about bedbugs and broken heating systems.

In the past, almost all of the attorneys here were representing landlords. But starting last year, New York City’s Right to Counsel law has provided free lawyers for tenants in 15 ZIP Codes throughout the city, three in each borough. The law is gradually rolling out and will serve 400,000 tenants when fully implemented in 2022, costing $155 million annually by that time.

New city data show the program is already working.

“We now see that in the first ZIP codes of the five-year phase-in, 56 percent of tenants now have representation in contrast to 1 percent of tenants citywide that had representation in 2013,” said New York City Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks.

And evictions declined by 27 percent in that time period, Banks said.

Those changes weren't solely propelled by the Right to Counsel law. The city already started piloting free lawyers for tenants in 2014, along with other anti-eviction services. It spent $77 million in the last fiscal year on those programs plus Right to Counsel.

In Brooklyn, Right to Counsel means tenants from the three eligible ZIP codes are routed to a sixth floor court room. If they make up to 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline, they're connected with lawyers.

Alfred Toussaint is a program manager with CAMBA legal services in Brooklyn, one of 20 legal service providers contracted through the Right to Counsel. Toussaint said rent-stabilized tenants often get into trouble when landlords take them to housing court.

“They tend not to know all the laws and the rights that they have in these particular apartments,” he explained. “So they enter into agreements that otherwise they would not have entered into if they knew the defenses that are available to them.”

One of his clients, who didn’t want to give her name because she feared retaliation by her landlord, said CAMBA enabled her to keep her apartment after she fell behind on her rent in May. She said she lost her job as a home healthcare aid when she got sick.

“There’s a lot of legal things I’m learning from them,” she said, of CAMBA. Touissant explained that his organization helped her apply for public assistance and a city program that would cover part of her rent.

But legal representation takes time. Attorney Jeff Hulbert works with many building owners in the Bronx neighborhoods with free attorneys. When tenants get lawyers, he said, things slow down.

“With the tenants coming to court saying they need to speak to an attorney, it gets adjourned,” he explained. “The attorney comes back to court, says I have to speak to my client, it gets adjourned. Third time it’s, you know, I can’t settle it we have to pick a trial date, it’s adjourned again.”

By then, he said, a landlord can spend 90 days or more without getting the rent. He suggests speeding things along by assigning a lawyer before the tenant’s first day in court.

Jean Schneider, the chief judge in charge of New York City’s housing court, agreed there’s room for improvement. But overall she said, she loves the new law. "Having a lawyer on both sides makes the court fairer," she said

And she believes cases are taking longer in many cases because problems are being addressed.

“The tenant lawyers that are being paid for by the city are raising issues, like whether the rent that’s been sued for is the legal rent or not,” she noted. “Whether there’s an overcharge involved.”

Schneider acknowledged lawyers are filing 15 percent more motions in housing court before a case is resolved. But she said they’re filing 15 percent fewer motions afterwards. She suggests that's because attorneys for landlords and tenants worked out a deal that spares everyone the need to return to court. "They know what to expect," she surmised.

But a year after Right to Counsel went into effect, advocates argue it still leaves out too many needy people. They note that tenants making minimum wage aren’t eligible for free lawyers because they’re considered above the income threshold.

Bronx Councilwoman Vanessa Gibson and Councilman Mark Levine of Upper Manhattan recently introduced a Right to Counsel 2.0 that would raise the income threshold to $48,000 a year for a single person and twice that amount for a family of four. The cost of the plan has yet to be evaluated. 

Gibson acknowledged it won’t be an easy lift, because the courts are so busy and the current law is rolling out over five years in order to hire enough lawyers for every neighborhood and avoid putting too much of a burden on the courts.

“I recognize the hardship the city has faced in trying to implement this, it has not been easy,” she said.

But added the Bronx and Brooklyn housing courts are supposed to move to bigger facilities. She also said the new law would include non-eviction cases and appeals, while providing more outreach to tenants so they can connect with lawyers earlier, as landlords prefer.

Regardless of how the proposal proceeds, Right to Counsel is expanding as scheduled. Five more ZIP codes were added this week.