Council Member Kate Stewart recently stated that “any rent increase over 10 percent is known as a constructive eviction. Constructive eviction is a landlord’s effort to remove a tenant through means other than a formal eviction.”
This comes from someone who just voted to raise property taxes by 10 percent. That move, presumably, has nothing to do with constructive evictions.
This also comes from someone who hasn’t proposed any meaningful zoning changes that promote affordable housing, such as rezoning the county’s acres and acres of single-family lots to multi-family.
This also comes from someone who hasn’t pushed for low-income housing tax credits.
The Maryland legislature recently mandated HOA increases to fund capital improvements. Those increases will, at least to some extent, be passed on to renters causing 10% rent hikes. (More on these HOA increases in a future post.)
Furthermore, there are landlords who haven’t raised rents for several years, and now have no choice. In those cases, a 10% increase, possibly the first in five years, is still a bargain for the renter.
Most importantly, this comes from someone who, as mayor of Takoma Park, saw the rental stock evaporate in her own city.
In spite of pressures applied to landlords by federal, state, and local policies, CM Stewart still thinks a 10% increase is tantamount to a landlord engaging in “constructive eviction.”
Folks, progressives have demonstrated for quite some time that their capacity for critical thinking is severely impaired. That only means we need to “follow the science” and come to our own conclusions based on facts. If the county’s leadership adopts rent control and thereby limits the stock of affordable housing, and doesn’t bother to take actions that positively increase the stock of affordable housing, then we can only conclude they don’t want affordable housing here. Virginia and the Maryland panhandle are short drives away, and landlords can supply affordable housing in those areas with much less heartache and far fewer insults.
