A dereliction of duty in the Senate
Renter advocates gather in Annapolis to call on lawmakers to pass Good Cause Eviction legislation in February, but the bill never got out of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. (File photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters).
In what many are calling an astonishing dereliction of duty, the Maryland Senate's Judicial Proceeding Committee (JPR) failed to move 'Good-Cause' eviction legislation forward. Despite unprecedented statewide support, including a 96-37 vote in the House last year, JPR allowed amendments pushed by the landlord/developer (LL/D) industry tying the legislation to rent stabilization laws, and weakening good-cause standards, letting landlords arbitrarily and unjustly evict renters from their homes.
The committee's first amendment would have required rent stabilization programs across Maryland to drop vacancy control from apartment homes. Vacancy control maintains rent levels for apartments when a tenant moves out. Vacancy decontrol lets rent float up to market rates, often to levels new tenants cannot afford. Affordable housing advocates adamantly oppose decontrol, pointing to the further loss of reasonably priced housing stocks.
The second series of amendments would have knocked the teeth out of the good causes that would be required to justify nonrenewal of leases and the eventual eviction of a tenant who stays longer than the lease term, known as Tenant Holding Over (THO). Including minor violations of a lease or community rules, for example, as a justification to evict turns on its head the very principle of establishing a stated, substantial violation to justify forcing someone from their home.
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Consensus has been building for decades that stable, quality homes are central determinants of community health, welfare and prosperity. The idea that a rental apartment is a mere 'unit' no different than any commodity, like craft beer or concert tickets, has faded as the relationship of stable, quality housing to social welfare and prosperity has changed.
Nearly 40% of Maryland residents now live in rental housing not as a station on the way to owning, but as permanent housing. It is no longer acceptable to destabilize whole communities with unpredictable and excessive rent increases that rely entirely on market potential, or to evict without good reason, without considering the social and economic costs to tenants and our communities.
At least that's what we thought …
But alongside modern thinking on housing policy that promotes affordability, and legislation to ensure stability, a counter narrative promoted by the rental housing industry and its well-financed network of lobbyists and bloggers has spawned, citing cherry-picked and distorted data.
The narrative goes like this: Things like good-cause protections, rent stabilization or stronger code and rights enforcement might sound nice to uneducated renters and their advocates, but they don't really need them. What they really need is investment in building more housing so that market competition will eliminate the lack of affordability and disincentivize bad landlord behavior.
They define the housing crisis solely as a 'shortage,' citing market demand for housing while ignoring the instability of existing residents' housing, and conveniently omitting discussion around when or how that demand might be met in specific markets. They say all we need to do is 'build our way out of the crisis.'
Industry-friendly bloggers cite the building boom of the Sun Belt and how housing prices there have come down, not mentioning high vacancy rates and low demand in some of those cities. They cite the St. Paul, Minnesota, sample where new multifamily building slowed after rent stabilization passed — but fail to mention how, when the city went back and exempted new development long enough for investors to recoup their investment and make a profit, investment in multifamily housing continued at its hurried pace.
Closer to home, the LL/D bloggers cite the lack of building in Takoma Park, citing rent stabilization as the cause. They don't mention the lack of land availability in Takoma Park, now understood to be a built-out community.
Housing codes and renter protections were introduced decades ago to put an end to the squalor, instability and abuse past generations of tenants endured. Teachers, police, nurses, retail workers, immigrants, young families and now, an increasing number of senior citizens are no longer able to purchase a home in a housing market that places home ownership well out of their reach.
Marylanders must ask why Senate Judicial Proceedings Chair Will Smith (D-Montgomery) and Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) would give deference to these fallacious industry narratives that set up a false choice between renter protections and building more housing, rather than using every tool at their disposal to get this done for constituents demanding action — and facts.
More than 5,000 Marylanders were evicted last year for THO, likely a tip-of-the-iceberg figure as it does not count those who move before going to court. Until our elected officials press them on just what that means, we will continue to see whole renter communities destabilized, while anger grows at those elected to represent them who failed to act.
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