Study Links NYC Right to Counsel to Fewer ER Visits in First ZIP Codes

What happened

A new study links New York City's right-to-counsel program to fewer emergency room visits in the first neighborhoods where it started. The City reported that the research was published Wednesday, October 21, 2026, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The lead author is Dr. Katherine Chen, an assistant professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.

The city launched right to counsel as a pilot in 2016. It gives low-income tenants facing eviction in Housing Court a free lawyer. It began in 10 ZIP codes chosen for factors like high shelter entry and eviction rates. Those included parts of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Staten Island's North Shore, Harlem, and Tremont and Kingsbridge in the Bronx. Over about three years it expanded five ZIP codes at a time. It went citywide in March 2020, two years ahead of schedule, largely because of COVID.

The researchers examined more than 8 million emergency department visits from January 2016 to February 2020. They counted only city residents who were uninsured or on Medicaid, as a stand-in for the income-eligible group. In the first 10 ZIP codes, they found at least 26 fewer visits per 10,000 residents. Thirty months after the program began, those ZIP codes had significantly lower ER visit rates than ZIP codes without it. The clearest drop was among children, at 32 fewer visits per 10,000. ZIP codes added in later phases showed no change.

Emergency visits tied to mental health and substance use disorders went up after the rollout. Chen said the study cannot prove right to counsel caused the drop, but called it "one leading, possible explanation." Danya Keene of the Yale School of Public Health said the results aligned with earlier research.