The Doctor Will See You Now, About Your Landlord

How Medical-Legal Partnerships Are Keeping Tens of Thousands of People from Losing Their Homes

Partnerships between hospitals and legal aid clinics are playing a growing role in preventing tens of thousands of evictions per year across the U.S., and they could also help prevent future evictions from occurring, according to a new report.

Known as medical-legal partnerships, the arrangement can help address unsafe or unstable housing conditions before they escalate into evictions. These partnerships exist in 49 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Center for Medical Legal Partnership (NCMLP). Altogether, the coalition includes 170 legal aid agencies, 58 law schools, and hundreds of general hospitals, HAS-funded medical centers, and centers serving children and military veterans.

These partnerships are having a life-changing impact as well. In 2025, more than 75,000 patients across the U.S. resolved their legal issues before being evicted through a medical-legal partnership, according to NCMLP data. That happened at a time when data from Princeton’s Eviction Lab found evictions were climbing in cities ranging from Atlanta, Georgia, to Charleston, South Carolina, and Portland, Oregon.

When Housing Conditions Become a Legal Emergency

Unlike other interventions that address evictions after the fact, such as rental assistance and legal representation for tenants, a new report from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) shows that medical-legal partnerships can play a significant role in preventing evictions in the first place.

“There’s a very complex system that often leads to eviction, but eviction and preventing eviction are separate from housing conditions in most people’s minds in a way that they shouldn’t be,” Holly Stevens, chief data officer at the Legal Services Corporation, told Invisible People.

Eviction laws and procedures are complex and vary dramatically by state and locality. There are some places where tenants are required to be represented by an attorney during eviction cases, and other states where tenants have almost no right to challenge an eviction after it has been filed. There is also a patchwork of rules and regulations governing how much notice a landlord must give a tenant before they can be evicted, according to the LSC Report.

Even though there are so many differences between local eviction laws, Stevens said there is one aspect that connects all these cases, unsafe housing conditions. Those conditions include issues like mold, lead, pests, and broken HVAC systems. All those issues can impact an individual’s personal health, which in turn can reduce the number of working days in a month and make it more difficult for them to pay rent.

Medical-legal partnerships were designed to address these issues. On one hand, legal aid organizations can help a tenant fight an eviction so that it does not end up on their record. Not only do evictions make it more difficult for an individual to find rental housing options in the future, but research from Yale University found that an eviction can increase the likelihood of someone entering an emergency shelter by 300%.

Legal aid organizations can also mediate between landlords and tenants to prevent evictions from happening. That can mean connecting a tenant with an eviction diversion program, helping a landlord find property improvement programs, and expediting settlements between the parties, according to the LSC report.

At the same time, medical centers can help address health issues both at the individual and building levels. For instance, a medical provider can help treat someone who developed asthma because of their housing conditions. The provider could also offer a “warm hand-off” to medical advocates, legal aid partners, or social workers who can intervene on a tenant’s behalf.

The Bigger Barrier: There Isn’t Enough Housing to Prescribe

To Stevens, the solution to the issue is to prescribe healthy housing for people. But that can be a challenging task for doctors and housing providers, considering that there is a significant shortage of affordable homes across the U.S. Data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows there is a 7.2-million-unit shortage of affordable homes for America’s lowest-income earners, who account for roughly 25% of the nation’s renters.

Similarly, the affordable homes available often require expensive remediation and maintenance projects. Some jurisdictions have created incentives for landlords and building owners to make their units healthier, although some programs have been slow to get off the ground.

“Doctors prescribing housing is challenging now because there is no housing defined for folks, and so even those innovative kinds of things that grab a headline when someone has done it, the waitlist could be a decade long in some jurisdictions,” Stevens said.

Expanding medical-legal partnerships has become more important as the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to grow. As of 2024, there were more than 771,000 people who were homeless across the U.S., representing an 18% increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, snapshot data in cities across the U.S. show that rates of homelessness are growing for seniors and families with children, two groups who are most impacted by the lack of affordable housing.

“Data shows that housing conditions are one of the biggest problems that lead to evictions,” Stevens said.

How You Can Help

The pandemic proved that we need to rethink housing in the U.S. It also showed that aid programs work when agencies and service organizations are provided with sufficient funds and clear guidance on how to spend aid dollars.

Contact your representatives. Tell them you support fair housing protections. We must ensure everyone has access to a safe and affordable home. These protections have proven effective at keeping people housed. This is the first step to ending homelessness once and for all.