Tenants in this building in Langley Park, Maryland, are living in deteriorating housing conditions
while facing the growing threat of mass evictions.
Their plight reflects a growing national trend.
Some tenants have already found themselves displaced,
in spite of a patchwork of local and federal eviction moratoriums,
including a recently extended CDC order.
Langley Park is simply a microcosm of what we're seeing across the country,
and until we stop seeing housing as a commodity, we're going to continue to have these issues.
But a growing number of tenants are discovering the power of their voice.
Many for the first time.
Langley Park resident Maria Lara and other tenants in her building
declared a rent strike in October 2020.
Located just 8 miles from the White House, Langley Park is home
to a vibrant community of immigrants.
More than 60% of the population was born abroad,
including many residents from Maria’s native country of El Salvador.
Like many of her neighbors, Maria's living situation is less than ideal.
Maria used to have a job at a hotel.
Now, she works odd jobs in construction, but can go weeks without receiving a call to work.
Like many of her neighbors, she lost her primary source of income
in the wake of the pandemic and is now struggling to make ends meet.
The area has experienced some of the highest COVID-19 case rates
in the Washington metropolitan area.
And with many residents unable to access federal aid due to their immigration status,
the economic fallout has been devastating.
Maria and other striking tenants have not paid rent in over six months.
And while she and others are temporarily protected from eviction due to failure to pay,
under the current Maryland state of emergency order she could still soon face eviction
because her lease ended and might not be renewed since she has not been paying rent.
But other tenants like Inmar Pineda, who says he always paid his rent on time,
have already been displaced, in spite of the eviction moratoriums in place.
Inmar’s apartment was condemned as uninhabitable in February 2021,
and the locks were changed with all his family’s possessions still inside.
He says the apartment office told him to stay in a hotel until his family could be relocated.
But later, he was informed that he would not be allowed back
and he would not be reimbursed,
since he was not the leaseholder.
I think there's a failure within our systems
that allow for landlords to neglect properties and units over time.
They've actively made decisions so that they could have better profits.
Ashanti Martinez is a research and policy analyst with CASA,
a Latino and immigrant-focused advocacy and assistance organization.
We've had members come to CASA to complain about
the conditions that the management company refuses to fix.
They claim that they don't have the resources or capital to make the improvements necessary.
But we know this is a decades-long issue
and not something that's happened just because of the pandemic.
We reached out to the building managers and owners for comment, but received no response.
The convoluted nature of property ownership in multi-unit buildings like these
presents an additional challenge in holding landlords accountable
for chronic maintenance issues.
A lot of these much larger multifamily properties are owned by large holding companies
or shell corporations of much larger companies.
So it's really hard to try to pinpoint or put a label on who the owner is.
And that's one of the issues that we're having in trying to bring people to the table
is that we don't know where to go and where to start.
Construction has begun on a new light rail initiative called the Purple Line
that will facilitate easier access to Washington from Langley Park and other Maryland suburbs.
The project has fueled concerns of gentrification,
with fears that large property owners will soon be seeking to cash in
on an anticipated rise in property values
while investing as little as possible in maintenance in the meantime.
Ultimately what we're seeing in the region is that
when you develop around transit, prices also go up.
There's not a lot of things to disincentivize landowners
to not just hold on the property and then sell as soon as possible once the Purple Line is here.
We fear that the owners are simply milking the property for whatever it's worth now
to be able to have a big payday later.
For tenants like Maria, this translates into deteriorating living conditions
and a snowballing pattern of neglect from the property management office.
Cancel rent!
Maria joins a surging number of voices across the greater Washington area
mobilizing for housing justice in the form of protests and rent strikes.
She first became involved with organizing last year through CASA,
and is a founding member and one of the leaders of her building’s tenant committee.
And they're already seeing results.
Maria and other organizers recently pushed local Prince George’s County lawmakers
to enact a rental assistance package that includes aid for both landlords and tenants in the area.
The current program potentially can help cover 12 months of rent for a tenant,
but some of those months will have to be paid up by the landlord,
and they do have to agree to not evict.
And so a lot of landlords are not incentivized to come to the table.
They feel as though they can just have their day in court.
While the CDC eviction moratorium was recently extended through June 30th,
it faces mounting legal challenges.
it faces mounting legal challenges
With courts across the U.S. beginning to resume eviction hearings,
the country faces a major housing crisis,
while initiatives that fail to distinguish between rent deferment and cancellation
leave many tenants vulnerable, as their economic future remains uncertain.
We are going to see a tsunami of eviction cases try to be seen.
The courts are right now trying to structure ways in which they can see more cases
than they typically would because there's such a huge backlog of eviction cases.
In the meantime, lives like Maria’s hang in the balance,
where their fight for housing is a fight for survival.