Tag: eviction

Crisis and Opportunity

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“Never allow a good crisis go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”

Rahm Emanuel said that when he was President Obama’s chief of staff.

That sound advice came to mind twice today.

This morning, I spoke to advocates for a right to legal counsel.

We passed a law providing access to a lawyer for tenants in housing court two years ago.

I had been working on this issue for over a decade.

The pandemic got the bill passed.

The surge in evictions prompted Speaker Adrienne Jones to put this issue on her agenda.

Maryland’s nursing shortage and the need to modernize our response to public health challenges were considered this afternoon by the Health and Government Operations Committee.

The nursing shortage will prompt us to consider a host of incentives and benefits so that patients will receive quality health care.

Adopt those incentives and payments here, and you create a precedent to do it elsewhere.

The Covid pandemic is the basis for the commission,

“It’s a moment of opportunity,” stated Dr. Josh Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins.Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It sounded familiar.

Reducing the Risk From Lead

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I’ve been working to reduce lead paint poisoning my entire career.

I dealt with two related issues today.

Every rental property must pass the state’s lead risk reduction test.

Nonetheless, the absence of a certificate of compliance is not an issue of fact in housing court.

I have reached agreement with advocates for tenants and property owners that will allow evidence regarding the lead reduction test to be used in court.

There is money in the federal bipartisan infrastructure law to address sources of lead in drinking water.

I began working on this issue last fall with the Maryland Department of the Environment.

MDE informed me today that this money can be used to address lead in the water system of Baltimore City schools.

I wrote school officials about this.

I asked them to keep me in the loop.

It’s never too early

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You need to start working on your bill months before you introduce it.

I’m currently in the drafting stage.

Bills that failed last session need to be revised.

Under House Bill 499, if a property owner violates the consumer protection law, any monetary penalty would be deposited in a fund for rental and housing assistance.

Last session, House Bill 18 created a right of access to legal counsel in certain eviction cases.

I’m modifying HB 499 to reflect that.

Before Gov. Hogan nixed the Red Line, I passed a bill mandating a study of the impact of the Red Line on adjacent communities.

The infrastructure and budget reconciliation bills in Congress could revive an East-West transit line.

Last night, the City met with the neighbors of Druid Hill Park to discuss how to make the streets adjacent to the park more neighborhood friendly.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-ci-baltimore-druid-hill-traffic-plan-20211008-3x2mhtt3ojbg3ecgkihkhhcnie-story.html

I’ve asked that a similar study be required for the Edmondson Avenue corridor and other areas in my bill for next session.

Will Roe v. Wade survive?

With a restrictive Mississippi law before the Supreme Court this fall, Roe is in danger.

As you likely know, Maryland voters approved on referendum a law that wrote the Roe protections into our law.

That statute should be unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision.

Nonetheless, access to reproductive health care, regardless of income, needs to be addressed.

I’m working with several colleagues on a bill draft.

Vaccines, Stimulus Payment, and a Lawyer

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      The 2021 General Assembly responded to the pandemic by making vaccines available to you and your family and providing financial assistance to Marylanders in need.  We also passed major legislation.

 

  • Vaccines were made available at Sinai, now at Northwest Hospital, and  at CHAI’s senior apartment communities throughout Park Heights.  Testing was conducted at Pimlico Race Track.Stimulus Payment, and a Lawyer
  • If you still need to be vaccinated, you can call 1-855-MD-GOVAX, pre-register at https://onestop.md.gov/govax, or try the Vaccine finder maryland.gov. You must register in advance at the Baltimore Convention Center 443-462-5511 and M&T Bank Stadium https://www.baltimoreravens.com/stadium/covid-19-vaccinations/ or 1-855-634-6829.
  • At the outset of the pandemic last year, I sponsored emergency legislation that greatly expanded access to telehealth. My bill this session adds access to school health centers, which many students rely on for essential health care services.
  • A single person with an income of $15,000 will receive $831 from state and local government, in addition to the money from the federal government. A married couple with two children and an income of $25,000 will get an additional $1,527. To see if you’re eligible, go to https://interactive.marylandtaxes.gov/Relief
  • For people who lost their job, my Constituent Director, Jackie Greenfield, has helped dozens of people obtain their unemployment benefit.  We passed laws to correct major flaws in the system.

 

       The pandemic made us aware of the inequality and injustice in America’s past and present.  My efforts in this regard are longstanding.

I served on the Task Force to Study Implementing a Civil Right to Counsel in Maryland. I introduced legislation to implement the recommendations of the task force in 2015.

This session, I was a leader in the effort that passed House Bill 18, which establishes access to counsel in eviction cases.  After bills are enacted in Annapolis, a tenant’s future is decided in a courtroom.  The landlords are represented by someone who knows the law 96% of the time; the tenant only 1% of the time.  Those are bad odds.  We have begun to address that unfairness.

Funding legislation did not pass.  The morning after the session ended, I started lobbying to pay for lawyers with federal stimulus dollars.

Gideon’s Trumpet in Housing Court

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I first became aware of the importance of being represented by a lawyer when I was 14 years old.

That’s when I read Gideon’s Trumpet, the book about Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court case that held a criminal defendant facing a jail sentence is entitled to a lawyer.

As a legislator, I’ve worked to extend this right to civil cases.  One of the people I’ve worked with is Steve Sachs, a former Attorney General of Maryland.  He argued for a civil Gideon before the Court of Appeals, but the court ruled otherwise, 4-3.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the public aware of the harmful consequences of eviction.  Consequently, two fellow legislators and I will introduce a bill creating a right to counsel in housing court.

Our letter to the editor was published in today’s Baltimore Sun. 

 

“Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,” wrote Justice Hugo Black in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases.

We believe that the same can be said for housing court, where the landlord is almost always represented, but the tenant is not.

Eviction has a crippling effect on families in any time but especially in the midst of a public health emergency. Attorney General Brian Frosh has dramatically outlined the “recurring nightmare” of an eviction notice (”Attorney General: Maryland eviction process ‘unfair to tenants,’” Dec. 11).

Families in our community who are renters are extremely vulnerable. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the inequities in our landlord-tenant system. Establishing a right to counsel would be a substantial gain for working families.

According to a recent study, tenants who are represented by legal counsel can avoid eviction in 92% of cases. In addition, counsel is estimated to save the state millions of dollars by preventing a displaced family’s reliance on a wide variety of public services.

The essential next step is to provide legal counsel for tenants threatened with eviction. That’s why we are introducing legislation in Annapolis next month to establish that basic protection.

Both parties, Justice Black declared, should stand “equal before the law.” Our legislation would enable them to do just that.

Shelly Hettleman, Wanika Fisher and Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg

The writers, all Democrats, represent, respectively, District 11 (Baltimore County) in the Maryland Senate and Districts 47B (Prince George’s County) and 41 (Baltimore) in the Maryland House of Delegates. Senator Hettleman and Delegate Fisher will be sponsoring legislation creating a right to counsel in eviction cases. Delegate Rosenberg will co-sponsor the House bill.

 

Getting to Progress From No

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One of the many things Pete Rawlings taught me when he was chair of the Appropriations Committee:

“You have to learn how to say ‘no’ to people.”

No doesn’t always mean nothing.

In the give and take of the fiscal limits of the budget, of the differing views on an issue, compromise is needed.

What does that mean today?

Speaker Jones has created a Work Group To Address Police Reform

and Accountability.

Senator Will Smith, chair of the committee that considers such legislation in his body, has outlined the reforms that the bill he’s introducing.

This means that legislation making major changes is certain to be enacted.

The Speaker has appointed me to the work group.

I am concentrating on applicant screening so that biased people are not accepted, a duty to intervene when another officer is violating the law, and how best for police to work with mental health and social workers in crisis situations.

Governor Hogan has suspended evictions until later this month. If he does not extend that prohibition, there could be a flood of homeless people.

I am drafting legislation that would protect the rights of tenants to a lead-safe home and working with Attorney General Frosh on funding for lawyers for tenants so that the laws we pass are put into effect.

“We will support locally-driven economic development and commit to directing a significant portion of clean energy and sustainable infrastructure investments to historically marginalized communities to help create local jobs and reduce energy poverty.”

That’s not part of the Green New Deal. It’s a policy statement resulting from negotiations between the Biden and Sanders campaigns.

It’s the basis for legislation that I have requested.

Some believe we should go further in the changes we make in the three areas I’ve discussed today.

My goal is to make serious progress.

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning