Housing court in Baltimore is 70 years old. As the first of its kind in the nation, it was designed as a space where landlords could be held accountable for safety violations and renters would be able to address problems. It was supposed to lead to a safer city with better housing. But after nearly a century, it’s falling woefully short on its promise. An investigation by The Baltimore Sun shows that Baltimore’s housing court often works against the very group it was designed to protect—tenants. And landlords are routinely not held accountable for failing to meet safety standards or poor living conditions.
A first-of-its-kind computer analysis of more than 5,500 complaints filed by Baltimore tenants from 2010 through November 2016 revealed that judges in rent escrow court tended to favor landlords, even when inspectors found and reported significant code violations: leaking roofs, no heat, infestations of insects or rodents, even suspected lead paint hazards.
When tenants file in rent escrow court, there is a process that then takes place in order for a dispute to be resolved. A city inspector visits the property, then reviews the claim and reports to the court. A judge may then decide to open up an escrow account, meaning that the tenant has the option of paying the rent into the escrow account rather than to the landlord until repairs are completed. Except the investigation found that the judges in Baltimore rarely exercise this option.
They found:
Judges diverted rent payments into escrow accounts less than half as often as they could have, based on inspectors’ findings. Inspectors reported threats to life, health and safety in 1,427 cases, court records show, but judges established accounts in just 702 of them. [...]
Even when accounts were established, judges returned most of the money to landlords when the cases ended. In cases in which inspectors found homes to be illegal or unfit for habitation, judges ultimately awarded 89 percent of the escrow money to the landlords. [...]
Judges routinely require tenants to pay all back rent landlords say is due before their complaints are heard. They do not typically require the landlords to show that they provided a habitable home — the legal basis for charging rent.
This means that while the system is supposed to be balanced, it is dramatically skewed to favor landlords. And what makes it even more unbalanced is that while landlords often have the knowledge and resource of how to work the system, tenants very often cannot afford lawyers and are inexperienced in these matters.
Landlords win because they enjoy the advantage of being “repeat players,” [Matt Hill, an attorney with the legal advocacy group Public Justice Center said]. Landlords and their agents know the judges and clerks, he said, and understand how the system works. Tenants, by contrast, arrive at hearings with little knowledge.
“They really are lost, and don’t know how to advocate,” Hill said.
This is really disturbing. Baltimore is already a city with its share of challenges and this is yet another one, which looms large. Not only are the majority of the city’s homes rentals but the city also has the dubious distinction of being the city with most eviction notices in the country.
The challenge is particularly great in Baltimore, because a disproportionate number of the city’s residents rent rather than own their homes. Nearly 53 percent of the city’s more than 297,000 homes are rentals, according to Census figures. Nationwide, rentals make up 36 percent of homes.
In the Census Bureau’s most recent American Housing Survey, in 2013, Baltimore’s renters had the unhappy distinction of receiving more court-ordered eviction notices per capita than any other city. More than 67,000 notices that year led to more than 6,600 evictions.
Last year, nearly 70,000 eviction notices led to nearly 7,500 evictions.
If people can’t find decent housing, where are they supposed to go? And when jobs are also scarce and the courts are not a resource, this is a dangerous combination that will lead to disaster. Luckily, there have been some ideas discussed in the recent past on how to reform rent court—although they are slow to emerge. Baltimore’s new mayor, Catherine E. Pugh (D), sponsored legislation last year as a state senator on how to reform rent court across the state. While there may be some skepticism about how much things will change under her watch, let’s hope she brings much needed solutions in this area.