This presentation will cover the significant legislative developments in housing law from the Texas 89th Legislative Session, with an emphasis on changes and additions to landlord-tenant laws. The session will also cover some caselaw updates from the past year, with an emphasis on landlord-tenant laws.
This session will focus on providing an update on rights of tenants facing eviction in federally subsidized housing and public housing. It will include an overview of HUD’s new regulations, effective January 13, 2025, on lease terminations for both federally subsidized housing and public housing tenants and caselaw developments. Time permitting, it will also include an overview of some of the major changes in the federal housing regulations relating to asset and income calculation, effective January 2, 2024, resulting from HUD’s implementation of the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016.
Fred Fuchs is the housing group coordinator for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, where he oversees the program's housing work. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law where he teaches a housing clinic each spring. He received his law degree from the... Read More →
Thursday August 28, 2025 9:00am - 10:00am CDT Room 406500 E 4th St, Austin, TX 78701
Although federal law (the CARES Act) requires affordable housing landlords to give their tenants a 30-day notice to vacate, they often ignore the law and evict tenants a month early. The CARES Act defense still frequently works when attorneys spot the issue, but it is an extremely unintuitive law for pro se tenants. Determining CARES Act coverage has become more and more difficult as the various databases for affordable housing erode.
We can shift our eviction advocacy from defense to offense by using the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The DTPA makes it illegal to misrepresent rights in contracts; common leases used by affordable housing landlords misrepresent the landlord's right to evict, contradicting federal law. This session will discuss legal background, strategic advocacy angles, and seeking creative equitable remedies through the DTPA.
The session will also address using the same DTPA theories to attack other illegal eviction tactics, unauthorized fees, and illegal lease provisions outside of the eviction process.
Presenting and objecting to evidence is a key and often poorly executed part of trial law. Understanding how to control what evidence the factfinder sees will often be the difference between winning and losing your case. This session will serve as an introduction to evidence in trial practice for newer attorneys and a refresher course for those of us for whom it's been a while. The first half of the presentation will be a practical evidence lecture, and the second half will be a mock eviction trial to demonstrate the skills explained during the talk.
Leesa Everitt, a native Houstonian, is a staff attorney at Lone Star Legal Aid in the Housing & Consumer Unit. Over the past decade she has handled a variety of civil legal matters, but her focus has been housing and landlord-tenant work. Her law degree is from the University of Houston... Read More →
From data mapping to data trends, data analysis helps you understand past data, uncover patterns, forecast future trends and use everything you learn to create an action plan for your legal project(s). This session will explore and provide examples of how lawyers have utilized data to develop housing projects and respond to crisis. We will also discuss how lawyers working in other practice areas can utilize data in their work to optimize performance and strategies.
This session will explore how legal aid attorneys can bridge the gap between housing law and consumer protections to provide more holistic advocacy for clients facing threats to their homes and debt-related threats to housing stability.
Supervising Attorney/Managing Attorney - Foreclosure Prevention Project, Lone Star Legal Aid
Practicing lawMentorshipServing low income communitiesHelping consumers (Consumer law)Helping homeowners with a variety of legal issues (real estate law)The highs and lows of litigationPractice uses of mediationUniversity of Houston athleticsPracticing yogaCyclingThe stresses and... Read More →
Molly Rogers is a Staff Attorney and the Team Manager for the Real Property and Home Foreclosure Prevention Team at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in Austin, Texas. TRLA is a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to residents of Central and Southwest Texas who... Read More →
Friday August 29, 2025 9:00am - 11:00am CDT Room 406500 E 4th St, Austin, TX 78701
