Landlords aren’t getting the money they need. The eviction cases they file are likely to number in the hundreds of thousands, advocates predict. Think about the human toll of evicting that many people, all at once.

“It’s going to be a disaster, quite honestly,” says [Cathy] Keenan of Volunteer Lawyers for Justice.

The Housing Stability Grant, which will come from the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, a non-profit organization created to help residents feeling the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, will be allocated for the Housing & Community Development Network of New Jersey (HCDNNJ) and the Volunteer Lawyers for Justice.

"With the grant, VLJ will have the equivalent of five staff attorneys dedicated to eviction defense work," said Cathy Keenan, the executive director of VLJ. "With a crisis of this magnitude looming, NJ will need the talents and expertise of legal services attorneys and pro bono attorneys from across the state to assist tenants. It is a real call to action for the private bar."

In an attempt to ease the backlog of cases, courts in a couple of counties have been holding online settlement conferences in which landlords and tenants attempt to reach agreement on rent arrears, said Keenan of VLJ. She said the court system is planning to hold the conferences in every county in New Jersey.

“The vast majority of tenants never have a lawyer in these cases, so they don’t know what their rights are,” Keenan said. As a result, renters sometimes have defenses that they didn’t know they had or have grounds for buying more time to move out or to repay arrears.