Justice in the Schools was 'my voice' in beating eviction threat
Raleesha Smith poses with her husband, Cornell Miller, in the Kansas City apartment where they live with their four children after the Justice in the Schools legal assistance program helped them defeat an eviction threat.
Raleesha Smith’s anguish spiked with each escalating eviction notice.
First came the tri-folded sheet of paper stuck in the crack of her south Kansas City apartment door, telling her that she and her husband and their four children had ten days to get out.
Then came the second sheet, saying the eviction was immediate, and they had 24 hours.
And finally the knock on the door that she opened to a process server — a man handing her the notice from the court.
Those were days — before she heard about attorney Garrett Christensen and the Justice in the Schools program with LINC and Legal Aid of Western Missouri — that were filled with frustration and terror.
She’d taken the eviction notice to the management office, anxious to try to resolve it, feeling certain that none of her family’s circumstances warranted such a severe consequence.
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But each time the management office personnel refused to discuss it, she said. They sent her out, she said, saying it was a matter for housing court now.
So many times in the past, renters like Smith and her husband, Cornell Miller, have been overwhelmed and powerless in moments like this.
“We couldn’t afford a lawyer,” Smith said. “She (the apartment manager) had the power.”
Smith and Miller rely on government subsidized housing, and the wait lists for another apartment were months long. The eviction filing — the first Smith ever received — now effectively blocked a potential agreement to move into another apartment.
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“We had nobody to stay with,” Smith said. Maybe they could send their four kids to her mother, but her place was too small even if she might be willing to take them in. She and her husband worried. “Would we go to a shelter? Or live in my car?”
In a call to the city seeking help, she was referred to Legal Aid of Western Missouri and that got them connected to Christensen, the Legal Aid attorney who, with LINC’s financial support, has been representing families and staff in some of the school districts in LINC’s Caring Communities.
“He told me my rights,” Smith said. “He was my voice.”
Since the Justice in the Schools program opened in the Hickman Mills School District in January 2020, the program has handled 484 cases for school families and staff, including 324 cases involving eviction threats and other housing situations, as well as 72 family law cases plus several other issues.
Those 484 cases have impacted 662 children and served 26 school staff.
The program expanded into the Center School District and has also taken cases out of the Grandview School District, including Smith’s case, whose children go to Butcher-Greene Elementary School and Grandview High School.
The support Smith received from Justice in the Schools follows a growing movement in Kansas City that has helped tenants gain some power in housing court where, historically, property owners and their attorneys overwhelmingly prevailed.
“He told me my rights. He was my voice”
KC Tenants and the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom have led the surge in tenants rights. Victories, like securing a Kansas City ordinance in 2022 that gives all tenants the right to an attorney, have come at a crucial time as eviction filings are rising again and rents are getting higher in the post-pandemic years.
In its recently released study — The State of Eviction 2023 — the Heartland Center reported that 1,941 tenants were represented by attorneys through the Right to Counsel ordinance in the first 15 months. Of those, 1,326 tenants avoided eviction, and 350 cases are still pending.
This is what the right to counsel and connecting with Justice in the Schools meant for Smith and Miller:
Christensen went to work on their case, seeking to determine what records, witnesses or other evidence the property owners might have to support their filing for immediate eviction.
Justice in the Schools attorney Garrett Christensen
There had been an incident, Smith told Christensen. In November of 2022, one of Smith’s daughters had gotten into a fight on the grounds of the apartment complex, and this had led to an shouting argument between Smith and the apartment manager that Smith thought had been resolved.
But in late February, months after the incident, the property owners had filed for an immediate eviction — a serious claim that suggested there was a threat to the safety of other tenants or staff. The notices left inside Smith’s door arrived in March.
Christensen searched for any police reports that might back up the seriousness of the claim and found there were none. He filed requests for discovery, asking the property owners for all the evidence they had to back the claim.
The property owners never complied, despite a legal duty to do so, Christensen said. Come the court day, May 4, the property owner’s attorneys arrived with no witnesses and still none of the requested documentation.
The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the property owners lost their claim and cannot refile it.
Smith, her husband and their four children remained in their home and their children never had to miss class or change schools.
The mission of Justice in the Schools is to help families stay in stable, safe homes so children can continue daily attendance in school with their familiar teachers and friends.
Smith’s case was alarming, Christensen said, “for the seriousness of the allegations and the significant detrimental effect it would have had” if it had gone unchallenged.
“It was a good result,” he said.
Smith had heard in the past about neighbors or acquaintances who struggled with landlords and evictions and found herself in the same state of distress when it happened to her. She felt the same intimidation with the legal system and a powerlessness against the landlord.
“A lot of people have been going through the same thing” with property owners, she said, “and no one stood up to them.”
But now she’s spreading the word — Justice in the Schools.
“They’re not judgmental,” she said. “They just want to help you.”
Joe Robertson/LINC Writer