Department: Purchasing
Department Head/Elected Official: DeWight Dopslauf
Regular or Supplemental RCA: Regular RCA
Type of Request: Contract - Amendment
Project ID (if applicable): 220395
Vendor/Entity Legal Name (if applicable): Neighborhood Defender Service, Inc.
MWDBE Contracted Goal (if applicable): N/A
MWDBE Current Participation (if applicable): N/A
Justification for 0% MWDBE Participation Goal: N/A - Goal not applicable to request
Request Summary (Agenda Caption):
title
Request by the Office of the Purchasing Agent that the County Judge execute an amendment to an agreement with Neighborhood Defender Service, Inc. to update the budget contained in Exhibit B for legal aid and eviction services for the Community Services Department for the period of March 14, 2023 - December 31, 2024, with no increase in the total contract amount (220395).
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Background and Discussion: As the nation recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States and Harris County are facing an eviction crisis. Eviction filings in Harris County are above the pre-pandemic average: from January through July 2022, landlords filed 121,248 evictions; tenants were represented by an attorney in only 1.96% of those cases. In one week in August of 2022, justice courts scheduled 1,865 eviction hearings. These figures do not include informal evictions, in which families self-evict before receiving a formal notice of a court proceeding.
In 2021, Harris County established the Housing Legal Services Initiative ("HLSI" or "the Initiative"), in response to an anticipated increase in number of evictions, especially for non-payment of rent due to household financial losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lift of the National Center for Disease and Control (CDC) eviction moratorium, and to maximize the impact of the County's COVID-19 rental assistance program.
The HLSI makes short-term, non-cash, in-kind emergency disaster relief in the form of consulting, referral, legal, and oth...
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