Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds that— based on the best available data, more than 3,000,000 evictions are filed in an average year in the United States, affecting individuals and families in urban, suburban, and rural areas alike; evictions impose significant costs on tenants, landlords, and communities as a whole; evictions disproportionately affect certain populations and communities, including families with children and renters of color who face a particularly high risk of eviction; collecting more comprehensive and consistent data through a national eviction database would foster a deeper understanding of the causes and contours of the eviction crisis as well as what efforts can be made to prevent or mitigate the consequences of evictions when they are unavoidable; expanding landlord-tenant community courts would benefit both landlords and tenants, as these courts can offer services that help tenants become current again on their obligations or offer alternatives to eviction that avoid homelessness or housing instability while also providing landlords with less costly alternatives to eviction; emergency assistance programs that provide short-term support to tenants facing a temporary emergency can also help prevent evictions and homelessness for low-income households; past evictions or eviction filings can contribute to the cycle of poverty by appearing on credit reports, and tenants have a right to know whether a tenant screening report contains inaccurate data that may impede their ability to pass a background check and secure a stable home; the Legal Services Corporation, established in 1974 under the Legal Services Corporation Act ( 42 U.S.C. 2996 et seq. ) and funded by Congress to provide grants for free civil legal aid, has documented— the ongoing justice gap in which 86 percent of the civil legal problems reported by low-income people in the United States, including housing-related legal issues, are handled with inadequate or no assistance from an attorney or other legal professional; and that more than 50 percent of the legal problems presented to legal aid organizations funded by the Legal Services Corporation receive only limited or no legal assistance due to lack of resources; the National Center for Access to Justice determined that in 79 percent of housing cases, the tenants are not represented by a lawyer; and funding for the Legal Services Corporation must be substantially increased to enable grantees of the Legal Services Corporation to provide legal assistance to all people facing residential eviction who cannot afford adequate counsel.
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