CINCINNATI — Anchor Julie O'Neill talked to Nick Dinardo, the managing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio, about the end of the eviction moratorium on Saturday. He said they have a lot of cases and have hired some new employees to help with the work, but tenants and landlords both need to be patient.
ND: We are swamped. We only have a limited number of attorneys here, so we’re trying to do as many of these cases as we can. Unfortunately, we can’t represent everyone.
I just don’t have enough attorneys here on my staff to do that, but we’re trying to prioritize the cases where people just need rental assistance. We have a partnership with Community Action Agency.
We’re also working with Hamilton County, who has a large amount of rental assistance, so we’re trying to work with them to get as many people help as we can.
JO: I’ve spoken with Hamilton County’s Community Action Agency. They have 18 people on staff. They’re working overtime, but we still have 500 people calling their office each day. Do they have enough people? Is this moving too slowly?
ND: You know we can always use more assistance. We’ve hired some additional paralegals whose job is mainly to process rental applications.
I know that Community Action Agency has added staff, Hamilton County has added staff, so I feel like we’re trying to move through these as fast as we can. There used to be much more of a backlog than there is now.
