down? Maybe, Mary thought, she
should say as little as possible until
her hearing date. She wished she
could get some legal advice, but
she couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer.
A few days later she would make
her way to the courthouse by her-
self and try her best to figure it out.
To any Atlanta landlord-tenant
lawyer, the pitfalls facing Mary are
obvious. She could fail to raise a
particular defense and waive it, or
omit a compulsory counterclaim.
Her answer could include irrele-
vant statements or harmful admis-
sions. Worst of all, she could fail
to raise any meritorious defense
in her answer, even if she had one.
In Fulton County dispossessory
court, this mistake would land her
on the 3:00 p.m. Judgment on the
Pleadings calendar, where judg-
ments are automatically granted
to landlords, and tenants are not
given the benefit of mediations
or hearings.
It is because the stakes of filing an
inadequate answer are so high that
Fulton County houses the Housing
Court Assistance Center (HCAC).
The roots of the HCAC are in a
two-year Equal Justice Works fel-
lowship held by Attorney Amy Mei
Willis and hosted by the Georgia
Law Center for the Homeless.
From 2014 until the summer of
2016, Willis ran the Answer Clinic,
a part-time service based in the
Magistrate Court Clerk’s office.
Willis and a cadre of attorney vol-
unteers would meet with tenants
and assist them with filing their
dispossessory answers, identify-
ing and articulating defenses and
counterclaims when the facts sup-
ported them.
Sometimes Answer Clinic volun-
teers would determine that the
tenants had no viable defenses
or counterclaims. In those cases,
they would provide information
about the eviction process and of-
fer referrals to sources of housing
them on their strongest defenses
and counterclaims.
In 2016, Willis’s Equal Justice
Works fellowship concluded. For
several months, the Answer Clinic
was on hiatus. That’s when several
Atlanta entities came together to
resurrect the clinic with a new
“In its first year, the Answer
Clinic served over 600 tenants
and family members.”
assistance. In other cases, though,
they were able to help tenants un-
derstand their defenses and raise
them on paper, thus avoiding the
Judgment on the Pleadings cal-
endar and ensuring a chance to
be heard. For example, a tenant
might truly be a month behind
in rent, but the attorney assisting
her might learn that she spent the
rent money on a hotel because
the apartme nt conditions were
so poor that it was not safe to stay
there. Answer Clinic attorneys
would advise that tenant to raise a
counterclaim for failure to repair.
In its first year, the Answer Clin-
ic served over 600 tenants and
family members. About half of
the assisted tenants went on to
enter consent agreements with
their landlords in mediation, or
obtained dismissals or judgments
in their favor. That year alone,
the Answer Clinic helped ten-
ants avoid more than $300,000
in money judgments sought by
their landlords–simply by advising
name and model. The Atlanta
Volunteer Lawyers Foundation,
the Georgia Law Center for the
Homeless, Lawyers for Equal Jus-
tice, and Georgia State University
College of Law’s Center for Access
to Justice worked together to cre-
ate the Housing Court Assistance
Center (HCAC).
HCAC is generously supported
by Eversheds Sutherland and
RentPath Gives Back, a charitable
foundation established by Rent-
Path to end homelessness. With
that funding, a part-time attor-
ney was hired to supervise and
coordinate HCAC on Tuesday and
Wednesday mornings. Under the
supervision of the part-time staff
attorney, tenants receive limited
legal assistance from volunteer
lawyers and law student interns.
From the moment tenants sign
in to the moment they file their
answer, HCAC volunteers aim to
treat each tenant with dignity.
They greet tenants with a hand-
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association THE ATLANTA LAWYER
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