By Jenna Milliner-Waddell and John Powers
Capital News Service
BALTIMORE –Kristina Way says that when rats were coming into her house from the vacant property next door, the landlord wouldn’t block up the hole under the kitchen cabinets that let them enter.
“You wanted your $800 a month,” she said of the property’s owner, “but you didn’t want to come and fix little things.”
Tenants are upset with the conditions they are living in, and landlords complain about past-due rent in the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood of Carrollton Ridge, where substandard housing — surrounded by trash-filled alleys, a breeding ground for vermin and pests — creates health problems for the residents.
Who is to blame for unhealthy housing? That is a question with many answers.
There are at least three sides to every story when talking about the housing conditions that plague Carrollton Ridge: the landlord’s, the tenant’s and the government’s.
And the debate is complicated by poverty, low property values, high unemployment rates, trash in the streets, vacant homes, underfunded health care and high rates of transience.
More than half of the homes in Baltimore are occupied by renters, according to the 2009-2013 American Community five-year estimates conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The average rent in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood is $658 a month, and most homes were built before 1939, according to City-Data.
“The resale value is very low around here,” said Dilip Bhagat, who owns rowhouses for rent in the neighborhood. “Properties don’t appreciate around here.”
Blame on all sides
Stanley Sugarman, a retired longtime Baltimore property owner and manager, said residents can see the problems when people aren’t invested in their community, and property values fall when people don’t take care of the neighborhood.
Landlords complain that tenants don’t treat the property well, leading to damage that landlords are asked to fix. Some tenants do not pay their rent on time, costing some landlords income they cannot afford to lose.
At the same time, tenants say that landlords don’t respond to complaints or don’t keep properties healthy and safe.
When either side feels it is being wronged, it must navigate the complicated city code to figure out what to do, which often involves hiring a lawyer and meeting with city employees. This takes time, which can force tenants to miss work and pay legal fees.
Jason Hessler, the assistant commissioner of the Code Enforcement Legal Section of Baltimore’s housing agency, said people who don’t own their homes tend not to care much about the condition of the area.
And John Bullock, the city councilman whose district includes Carrollton Ridge, added, “Clearly there is a challenge when you have such transient areas and there isn’t a connection to the community, the community association and the local government.”
“We know that there are differences between homeownership and renting when it comes to being invested in the community,” Bullock said.
While homeowners are left to deal with their own housing issues, landlords and tenants are supposed to be protected by the housing code in Baltimore. The code is meant to deal with disputes between landlords and tenants, enforced by city inspectors and the city courts.
But The Baltimore Sun last year published a computer analysis of more than 5,500 tenants’ complaints filed in Baltimore housing court between 2010 and 2016 and found that landlords usually win. Cases are often delayed or dismissed, The Sun found, which means tenants don’t get help for the problems they reported.
The housing court was set up to help tenants like Kristina Way, who say that landlords are not fixing serious problems. A tenant can file a rent escrow petition with the district court. This would allow the tenant to make rent payments into the court, which the landlord would receive only after making the necessary repairs.
“Escrow is a pretty good remedy,” Deborah Weimer, a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, said. “It’s not perfect, but if the tenant is having a problem in their apartment that is affecting their health or well being … absolutely pursuing rent escrow is a good idea.”
This process is described in the Baltimore housing code, which says the tenant must be living in housing deemed “substandard with respect to the health, safety, welfare and reasonable comfort of its citizens.” The conditions that would fit the description are listed as including “a lack of heat or of hot or cold running water,” and “an infestation of rodents.”
The law describes exactly what a tenant can do when he or she believes the landlord should be making repairs. First, the tenant must have previously notified the landlord by certified mail and been given a “reasonable opportunity” — up to 30 days — to deal with the issue.
“One of the primary things the court is authorized to do is set up a structure where the tenant could file a petition based on saying, ‘I have life-threatening problems in my apartment and the landlord hasn’t fixed it even though I have given the landlord notice,’ ” Weimer said.
After a petition is filed with the court, a housing inspector is sent to identify any health-threatening problems. If they’re found, the tenant can proceed with rent escrow.
“If the landlord does not make the repairs right away the tenant can continue to pay the rent into the court each month until the landlord does make the repairs,” Weimer said.
“At the end of that time the court decides if the money should go to the landlord, If the landlord made the repairs relatively quickly and took care of the problem, or whether the money should go back to the tenant because the tenant was living in this substandard housing for all this time.”
The system does not always work, observers say, for a variety of reasons. First, tenants must have the money to pay the rent escrow to the courts. Landlords say this process doesn’t work for tenants who simply are out of money.
And many tenants are unaware of steps they can take to help themselves. In December 2015 the Public Justice Center released a study, “Justice Diverted: How renters are processed in the Baltimore City Rent Court,” that found 50 percent of the renter-defendants surveyed didn’t know how to present their case.
Tenants are not alone. Landlords too can be ignorant of the code that dictates their legal action.
“I didn’t know the laws of Baltimore city in terms of landlord versus tenant,” Marilyn Brown, a Carrolton Ridge landlord, said.
Brown, a resident of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and a landlord in Carrollton Ridge, once had a police officer refuse to enforce an eviction because she did not provide the proper proof of notice to her tenant.
“He just left, so I was very upset and angry,” Brown said.
To evict a tenant, the landlord needs to file a failure-to-pay-rent form with the district court. Then the tenant is notified, according to the Maryland courts website.
The Baltimore’s Housing Code Enforcement Division receives more than 25,000 complaints every year — an average of 68 a day, a staggering workload.
Sugarman, the property owner and manager, said he is certain that not all of the complaints are properly addressed.
“People have negative feelings toward the code enforcement system, and as a result, they are frustrated,” Sugarman said.
The housing code itself is written well to protect both parties, Sugarman said. But writing and applying a city code are two different issues entirely. “Code enforcement is only as good as the economics,” Sugarman said.
Bullock agrees. “I see it as an enforcement issue,” he said.
A lot of the problems in Southwest Baltimore stem from the poverty in the area, according to Sugarman, which contributes to substandard housing and low property values.
Weimer, who started a clinic for law students who primarily represent tenants, said she has had clients who were moved into rowhouses with abandoned properties next door.
Dilip Bhagat owns a rowhouse in the 300 block of S. Pulaski Street, a block that comprises 10 buildings. Five are occupied, five vacant and dilapidated. Bhagat says he’d rather have the vacants taken down than have them remain and cause problems with adjoining, occupied rowhouses.
“That is better than having abandoned houses,” Bhagat said. “If a house is abandoned then it’s hard to get insurance on the property.”
“I have one house where the house next door caught fire, so that’s been vacant for three years,” he said. “And the house on the other side is vacant because the tenants moved out, and no new tenants have moved in, so backyards are a mess. In the vacant house there is a tree growing.”
But finding the owner of a vacant house can be a challenge. Some people abandon houses in poor neighborhoods rather than invest in repairs and find taxes.
Adjacent abandoned houses are out of a landlord’s control — but landlords can control other factors. To protect themselves from residents who treat the property poorly, landlords often put specific protections in their lease that delegate responsibilities to tenants.
“On the lease we put it that it’s their responsibility to keep the backyard clean,” Bhagat said. “We tell them not to put their stuff in the alley. So many people do it. It does create a rodent problem.”
Bhagat had a tenant who complained bed bugs were traveling through the ceiling from the house next door. He told her he was not responsible because she lived there a whole year before complaining.
Weimer said that Bhagat is correct. “If there is a roach problem, or a problem with rodents, the law in Maryland basically says if you are renting a single family house then it’s your problem to get rid of mice or rats.”
“It’s not the landlord’s problem because you are the only person living in the place. On the other hand, if it’s a multifamily building, then it’s the landlord’s issue,” she said.
Bhagat’s Pulaski Street rowhouse cost him $11,500 in 2011, according to state property records. The property is now valued at $15,000.
“I could not afford to move outside this neighborhood right now,” he said. “I would love to because I’ve got kids now.”
Tenants and landlords alike feel stuck in this neighborhood.
Weimer believes the issues plaguing Carrollton Ridge cannot be fixed by just the individuals in the neighborhood. She believes part of the burden rests on the city to more vigorously enforce the housing code and to provide more funds to prevent evictions.
“The city really could do is get more serious about affordable housing for people in Baltimore,” Weimer said.
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