Rent Stabilization in Maryland | Housing Justice
Housing is critical to infrastructure and, we believe, a human right. The greatest asset in any community is its people – their health, prosperity, and quality of life are at the core of measuring community sustainability.
Maryland’s local governments are not meeting the housing needs of all its residents; not equally and not equitably. But with rent stabilization, they could be.
- Moving to cheaper apartments is not an option.
- Moving is very costly and risky –
- high-security deposits, moving costs,
- the risk of being denied a lease, and
- the likelihood of entering a new contract at a higher market rate.
Residents want to remain in our region for job opportunities, school quality, and cultural diversity. Still, they suffer from endless price escalation in the private commercial market where they overwhelmingly reside. To stay housed in the Maryland region, they make daily decisions that impact their family’s nutrition, health, and welfare because they need to commit exorbitant portions of their income to housing.
Rent stabilization
- A limit on annual rental increases should be codified as permanent law. The housing cost burden is most prevalent among renters, who pay upwards of 51% of their income on rent (compared with 36% of homeowners).
- A system of tenant protections that can curb the crisis of evictions, displacement, and affordability. Rent Stabilization would protect tenants from often out-of-state profiteering landlords through rent restrictions. In market-rate apartments, landlords can charge whatever the market might hold, often putting undue burdens on renters and leading to effective economic displacement while neighborhoods gentrify and rents increase.
- Provides predictability about rental increases that allows tenants to plan budgets
- Centers community interests, including family and student stability, reducing homelessness and achieving cross-jurisdictional economic diversity rather than the current system in which maximizing profits for landlords is the only interest.
Rent Stabilization laws are in place in communities across the country – in small towns, major cities, counties, and in two cases, statewide in Oregon and California. The policies vary significantly from place to place, but almost all address specific key policy points.
