CDC moratorium isn’t enough to prevent evictions in Maryland
During the last year, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) has made significant changes to enhance our leadership, update our programs and reinforce our core values to better serve universities, entrepreneurs and the technology sector in our state. We place great pride in our values as they guide our efforts and interactions with people inside and outside of our organization. They are critical to our mission and for serving our stakeholders.
During these challenging times as our world, nation, state and communities are coping with a health crisis, an economic crisis and social justice issues, it is time for each and every one of us to step up and be accountable for our actions. With the recent hiring of a new CEO and executive director, we at TEDCO are ready to move forward and help entrepreneurs, counties and our state. We are ready to leverage our outstanding people, technologies, universities and companies and lead innovation to market.
When discussing TEDCO’s core values, first and foremost, it is important to talk about enhancing our accountability, or how we spend public funds, invest in the next generation of research and technologies, measure our impact, and openly report it to our stakeholders.
Part of our accountability is to adhere to our mission to enhance economic development by fostering an inclusive and entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem. We manage many programs at TEDCO and they all have a unique mission, distinctive ecosystems and they address communities or a unique tech sector. But we also try to identify, support, fund or invest in, and help grow new technology companies in Maryland.
We also ensure that accountability is ingrained throughout the organization, that means recording and reporting our data, what works and sometimes what doesn’t work. We share this data on our website, with other agencies, other states and the public through testimonies, meetings and annual reports. We also comply with the Maryland public meetings act, and many of our board and commission meetings are open to the public. We publish minutes from those meetings regularly.
But for us accountability is not just the measuring and reporting of our activities. Accountability as a core value is the continuous improvements of our actions to advance our programs and create value. We routinely review and comply with our statute and policies that we and our oversight boards have implemented. Throughout all our programs we assess our guidelines and operations to identify gaps and plans to address them with new policies and procedures.
Through these actions our advisory services programs are able to serve entrepreneurs in every county in our state. Our Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund supported research and commercialization targeting 24 diseases in just the past year, including stem cell injection into the stump site of amputees to try to help the more than 2 million amputees in the U.S. Our flagship technology transfer program, the Maryland Innovation Initiative, was able to increase our universities’ start-up formation by 31%. And through our multiple federal programs, we leverage our state investments with non-state funding to enhance our reach.
Accountability means that in our investment programs we don’t just count the number of applications, we track diversity in terms of the number of women, minority and disadvantaged founders. We are accountable for the capital we invested in each company, in total, and the amount of follow-on capital, and we make sure Maryland jobs are created in those companies.
We all at TEDCO will continue to track, record and measure our activities and the progress our programs make. We’ll continue to improve our service and are ready to assist the next wave of entrepreneurs. As we move forward, we are ready for the legislators to bestow upon us new programs and new initiatives and help Maryland grow.
COVID-19 has lit a torch on the systemic social and economic inequities faced by communities of color with respect to health care, livable wages and affordable, safe housing. Congress has failed to prioritize housing stability and pass adequate relief measures for tenants facing evictions while eviction protections in Maryland and around the country have expired.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a “Temporary Halt in Residential Evictions to Prevent the Further Spread of COVID-19” Order. The CDC order is intended to provide broad relief from evictions until December 31. The order highlights the reality that housing is health care: “Housing stability helps protect public health because homelessness increases the likelihood of individuals moving into close quarters in congregate settings, such as homeless shelters, which then puts individuals at higher risk to COVID-19.”
While we’re grateful the CDC acknowledges the connection between public health and eviction, the CDC order has limitations. Tenants must actively provide a “declaration” to their landlord that they meet five criteria to be eligible for protection. And the Maryland Judiciary’s guidance on the CDC order will limit its effectiveness further by instructing trial courts to proceed with litigation of each eviction complaint — forcing tenants to defend their cases at court during the pandemic — and only to hold off on the eviction judgment itself until Jan. 1, 2021.
Much more needs to be done to prevent a tsunami of evictions in the form of a comprehensive residential eviction moratorium and meaningful rent relief. Without government action following the CDC’s Order, 30 million to 40 million tenants nationwide continue to be at risk of losing their homes. This burden falls heaviest on Black and brown working communities — with half of Black and Latinx households unable to pay July’s rent compared to a quarter of white renters. The CDC reports that the Black and Indigenous population have infection rates five times and four times, respectively, higher than the white population. Eviction has always been a threat to public health. The cocktail of housing insecurity and high infection rates among minority communities may prove to be lethal.
In Baltimore, families find themselves at the mercy of the court in eviction cases without legal representation all the time. While 96% of landlords are represented, only 1% of tenants have counsel. Without an attorney, the chances you can receive a fair outcome in a wrongful eviction case are slim. Unfortunately, these statistics are,
once again, not Maryland-specific. Across the country, fewer than 10% of tenants, on average, are represented, despite landlords being represented 90% of the time.
The solution to this crisis is simple and cost-effective. First, Maryland should enact a broad eviction moratorium that does not depend on filing declarations or litigating cases during the pandemic. Some states have continued their eviction moratoriums — with some municipalities even extending through the rest of 2020. Other governors, however, including the Hogan administration, debate whether children should continue learning from home or in school buildings and fail to acknowledge that many of those children will be homeless if a true eviction moratorium is not reinstated.
Second, provide rent relief. Elected officials have not dedicated adequate resources to alleviate housing instability in a meaningful way. Maryland alone has a $370 million rental delinquency and 274,000 households unable to pay the rent and facing possible eviction. Housing advocates in Maryland have requested $175 million in rental assistance from the state’s $1.3 billion in federal CARES Act funds granted to alleviate the economic pressures crushing Maryland families. The governor has allocated a meager $30 million for rental assistance, a little over $109 per household facing eviction.
Finally, establish a right to counsel in eviction cases. A report by Stout Risius Ross found that by investing $5.7 million
annually in tenant representation, the government would save or avoid $35.6 million in the costs of homeless shelters, emergency room visits, homeless student transportation costs, lost school funding and foster care costs linked to eviction. Access to an attorney dramatically reduces evictions and ensures that families are not put onto the streets. In the three years that New York City has had a right to counsel, evictions have dropped 29% in those ZIP codes where the right has been implemented, and 84% of represented tenants have been able to remain in their homes. House Speaker Adrienne Jones has called for enacting a right to counsel in eviction cases and providing for meaningful rent relief. We look forward to working with her on this fundamental housing lifeline.
We are facing a crisis within a crisis. The CDC order is not enough. It is time for Maryland and other states to implement real solutions that tackle the root causes of social and economic injustice. COVID-19 has shown how paramount equitable housing policies are to promote public health and address racial disparities, and it is time to act. We can implement costeffective solutions that should have happened decades ago and rebuild our economy.