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By Tim Balk and Chris Sommerfeldt

A majority of the City Council has signed a letter calling on Mayor Adams to add at least $195 million for legal service providers to next year’s budget, warning that the city-supported lawyers face a “funding crisis.”

The letter, carrying signatures from 26 of the Council’s 51 members, said local right-to-counsel providers and public defenders need salary increases to ensure free legal services are available to millions of New Yorkers who rely on them.

Support for legal service providers is a top priority for Council negotiators, said Councilman Shaun Abreu, the Manhattan Democrat who authored the letter.

He said more than 25,000 tenants are cycling through the housing court system without the lawyers they are entitled to by law. Salary rates have been cited as an obstacle to hiring and retaining the attorneys.

“This is really a call to the administration to cough up and pony up money in order to make sure that the right to counsel that was once promised continues to operate as intended,” Abreu said in an interview.

He said the $195 million requested amounts to just a “fraction of what’s needed.”

“What we’re calling for is to cover the existing contracts and the existing services so that we have right to counsel,” Abreu added.

“When our organizations are unfunded, it’s our clients, Black and Latinx New Yorkers, who suffer the consequences,” said Twyler Carter, chief executive of the Legal Aid Society, in a statement. “The Legal Aid Society lauds the City Council for standing with us and the communities we represent.”

Abreu, who said he was evicted as a child, warned of harmful consequences if the city does not make a larger commitment toward legal aid providers.

“It will result in more displacement,” Abreu said.