Members of CASA rally in Annapolis in support of various housing bills on March 14, 2024. Photo by Danielle J. Brown
State housing officials, lawmakers and advocates say they hope to build off of legislative successes from last session to move bills across the finish line in the 2025 General Assembly that didn’t make it last year.
Along with talks to increase Maryland’s affordable housing supply and provide further renter protections in 2025, advocates and housing-focused lawmakers agree that the big-ticket item this year will be a renewed effort to ensure that landlords who evict tenants have a good reason to do so, what’s known as a “just cause” eviction.
“That’s probably going to be the headline bill from a tenant perspective – 100%,” Del. Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery) said in a recent interview. Stewart backed several housing bills in the last session, including the just cause bill that would have let local jurisdictions adopt such eviction requirements.
Just cause eviction restrictions, sometimes called “good cause” evictions, is the top priority in the upcoming session for Montgomery County Renters Alliance Executive Director Matt Losak and other renter advocates.
“Fundamentally, we believe that no one should ever be evicted from their home without a good reason,” he said. “A landlord, especially an abusive landlord, can force someone out of their home without having to justify it.
“That loophole in renter protections allows for all types of abuse from racial discrimination to retaliation for pursuing promised or required services and maintenance, to forming tenant’s association,” Losak said. “There’s no more important piece of legislation this year or any year to protect renters than just cause evictions.”
During the 2024 session, just cause got further than it had in previous years. It passed the House, but died in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, where chair Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery) never brought the issue to a vote.
“(The House) has passed it already, so our view is that all eyes are on the Senate,” Losak said.
Landlords objected to the law that they said would essentially give their tenants “life tenancy in the property.”
In written testimony to the House Environment and Transportation Committee in the last session, the Maryland Multi-Housing Association said the bill “legislates an unconstitutional imbalance in the landlord-tenant relationship.” It also said the proposal would force some tenants to live next to “harassing or even dangerous residents” while a drawn-out eviction process went on.
But Losak said that several demographics who tend to struggle with housing instability would benefit from the just cause legislation if it passes this year, including racial minorities, low-income families, and increasingly, seniors on fixed incomes.
“This is not a modest piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation that will impact hundreds of thousands of Maryland residents,” Losak said. “This is something that is going to the heart of stable homes, and right now we continue to be in a highly unstable time for housing.”
In addition to just cause legislation, Stewart says that there is talk of reviving other bills that were popular among advocates last year.
That includes legislation to protect the possessions of renters who face eviction. Currently, landlords can leave an evicted tenant’s possessions on the sidewalk or the side of the road, where they are subject to theft or weather-related damage before the tenant can retrieve them. Another proposal being eyed for next session would limit opportunities for landlords to reject a potential tenant due to a criminal history.
More people aged 65+ face homelessness, state housing officials report
But protecting tenants also means creating safe and affordable housing options, Stewart said. He said that if more new housing goes up, there will be pressure on existing landlords to ensure their properties are safe and clean so they don’t lose tenants to another landlord.
“That’s an important piece of this,” he said. “We’re never going to be able to solve the habitability problems we have here by just building more and more housing – but I do think that having more housing that is new and clean and is safe, puts pressure on the monopolistic landlords.”
Moore housing priority sneak peak
Part of Gov. Wes Moore’s (D) legislative priorities last year included a bill that aimed to incentivize new affordable housing in exchange for increased building density for developers. The goal is to cut down on a 96,000 unit housing shortage in Maryland.
Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day said the administration’s main housing priority in 2025 will be to continue increasing new housing by making it easier for developments to get approval from county officials.
“The governor is a national leader on housing affordability, and this not is an issue that is resolved by one piece of legislation last year,” Day said in a recent interview. “It was a step in the process toward making Maryland’s economy competitive again, and making Maryland affordable … and increasing housing production.
“Increasing housing production is a fundamental part in how we get there. The legislative efforts in 2025 will further that cause,” Day said.
Day previewed the governor’s upcoming housing legislation at a Maryland Association of Counties conference in early December. While the exact language was still in the works, Day said the “high-level overview” of the administration’s upcoming housing plan will “assess the housing infrastructure gap of the state of Maryland by region.”
“What happens now … with many developments, the discretionary part of the process is what gums up the works — and what stops housing that is allowed under the black-and-white of our zoning regulations from ever moving forward,” Day said during a housing panel at the conference on Dec. 11.
“Project timelines draw out, project denials stack up on various aspects of the approval process and we end up exactly where we are — which is a state that isn’t growing, an economy that’s not growing, and housing unaffordability,” Day said. “And that burden affects all of us for a long time to come.”
He said the administration plan is “aimed squarely at that problem” by looking at the different regions of the state to “look at the jobs-to-housing ratio where there is a mismatch.”
“There will be an affirmative obligation to approve housing development within those areas to reduce that gap … but it offers good reasons, six of them, good reasons to deny. That could be inadequate water and sewer infrastructure, that could be countywide school overcrowding.”
As the details on the legislation get ironed out, Day promised that the 2025 session would be “another year of housing.”