Negligent Landlords Come Out On Top

By: Anonymous Watcher

The court seemed chaotic today. This day, February 4, 2019, was sleeting sideways and many of the schools in Baltimore were closed, but people still had to come to court. They were just making sure that they were not evicted from their homes and left homeless.

One woman, who chose to remain anonymous, talked about how she had come to court for the failure to pay rent. She walked into the court room with a tired look in her eye; her son was behind her. She told the judge that there were several things wrong with her apartment that the landlord had failed to fix. She wanted to get a rent escrow account, so the landlord would be forced to fix her apartment.  Later, she told me that her toilet was broken, but what really worried her was her leaking ceiling and the mold that was coming in through her bedroom closet. She told me, “I swear, the outside wall has got to be fixed.” But, the landlord’s defense was that she had painted over the mold that was growing through the wall.  

The judge ordered tenant pay all of the alleged outstanding rent into her escrow account before the date of the escrow hearing would take place. So, now she has to pay over $2,000 to fix an apartment even though it has leaky ceilings, and rats and mold consume her apartment. She had refused to pay full price because her apartment was not worth the rent she was paying. By making her pay all her backed up rent, the court is saying that she has to pay the full amount the landlord says it is worth just to have her case heard, even in its extreme dilapidation.