If the Baltimore City Council adopts new rules in the coming weeks, residents may have a new outlet to hold landlords renting uninhabitable apartments with at least 20 units or more across the city accountable.
For Baltimore City residents like 68-year-old Elaine Nichols, who lives in the Reservoir Hill neighborhood, she would have a way to systematically report poor living conditions she already endures.
“If you go in that building you can smell the mold,” Nichols told reporters during a Monday press conference about her apartment complex known as Temple Gardens.
In November 2022, her unit was damaged by a stovetop fire. But now, roughly three months later, she says the damage has not yet been repaired.
“I did the best cleaning I could do,” Nichols said.
But she claims that the building still needs repairs from excess smoke and water damage after the fire. Beyond that, the building is infested with mice and roaches, she said.
Temple Gardens, a high-rise near Druid Hill Park, is owned by E.T.G. Associates ‘94, according to state business and property records. The company did not immediately return a request for comment for this story.
It’s a multigenerational home with her 14-year-old granddaughter living in the apartment.
Both Nichols and her granddaughter have both been recently hospitalized as they suffer from asthma and other chronic respiratory issues, she said.
She’s just one person in a city where roughly half the population rents from a landlord.
Some renters say they have suffered from dangerous and unsanitary conditions for decades with little recourse, advocates say.
The bill was introduced by Zeke Cohen, who represents District 1, on Monday night.
Cohen, who represents neighborhoods from Little Italy to Highlandtown, seeks to hold any landlords who are ‘bad actors’ accountable by threatening them with civil fines and the ability to revoke their rental operating license.
As proposed, the legislation would leverage anonymous reports by tenants to the city combined with 311 calls and emails in addition to any outstanding building violations on record. For example, that could include unaddressed lead or elevator maintenance complaints to identify complexes with the worst living conditions for residents.
Apartment buildings in poor condition with numerous complaints and outstanding violations would go on a priority list to receive semi annual inspections from city inspectors rather than a third-party inspector hired by a landlord.
“[Landlords] will have an opportunity to fix any issues that are identified,” Cohen said. “At that point though, [if] the building still cannot provide a minimum human standard of living for the tenants. [The company] will lose its rental license.”
Under the new rules, landlords would be required to distribute inspection reports to tenants.
The bill also aims to increase transparency by requiring the Department of Housing and Community Development to provide notice to tenants who are living in unlicensed buildings, a fact of life for some Baltimoreans who may not even know it.
“I lived in an apartment building that was unlicensed for years and didn’t have a clue until I applied for rental assistance during the pandemic,” said Indigo Null, an organizer with Baltimore Renters’ United, a coalition of tenant advocates.
Null claims they were denied rental assistance during the coronavirus pandemic because the landlord did not have a rental license.
A representative of the city’s housing department, Tammy Hawley, said that it is tasked to “ensure safe living conditions for all residents through code enforcement activities” in an email to WYPR.
