For the second time in a year and a half, Victor ended up in the hospital after one of his three children woke up in excruciating pain.

The first cockroach he pulled out of his eight-year-old’s ear was still alive. Another had died in the ear.

Bugs weren’t the only problem that Victor, 33, said plagued his apartment in the Brooklyn neighborhood in south Baltimore. Rainwater seeped into the living room through leaky walls and peeling paint. The kitchen smelled of gas and black water poured from the faucet, according to Victor, who asked the Banner to use only his first name for fear of further retaliation from previous landlords.

Six years ago, Baltimore, where about half of residents rent, passed an ordinance designed to ensure that rental properties “meet basic safety and maintenance requirements,” according to the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

To legally list properties on the rental market, they must obtain a rental license by registering with the city and passing a home inspection. Initial licenses are valid for two years and must be renewed every one to three years, depending on the property’s maintenance record and violation history.

Earlier this week, a major hurdle was cleared for a renter’s rights bill originally introduced by Council Member Zeke Cohen for 2023. The bill, which Cohen said would address deficiencies in the rental licensing system that affect some of Baltimore’s most vulnerable residents, will now go before the full City Council for a vote.

Groups representing rental property owners and managers agree with housing activists that the system is overall a positive. Aaron Greenfield, director of government affairs for the Maryland Multi-Housing Association, said landlords who don’t follow the law should be held accountable.

“If they don’t have a license, they shouldn’t rent,” he said.

If the law is enforced, it will be used to “protect tenants from wrongful evictions and prevent unscrupulous landlords from collecting money in violation of the law,” says Zafar Shah, deputy director of the nonprofit Advocacy at Maryland Legal Aid. said.

Still, housing activists say the success of these measures is limited by complaint-dependent enforcement and loopholes that allow for negligence and abuse, as well as a lack of education on both the tenant and landlord side.

Victor eventually refused to pay rent for several months because the conditions were unbearable. In March, his landlord sued him and tried to evict the family from the house.

Victor’s lawyer asked the landlords for a copy of their rental license. When they failed to provide a copy after weeks of back and forth, the case was dismissed.

The property, where Victor and his family had lived and paid rent for about eight years, had never been licensed.

A tough fight

Rental licenses became a hot idea about a decade ago because they offer cities a way to proactively manage substandard housing without relying on complaint-based solutions, said Shah, who has been helping renters fight evictions since the laws were introduced. In Maryland, the six largest counties all have their own version of rental license requirements, he added.

“It’s a process that the city has to go through,” he said.

To obtain a rental license, owners or landlords must pass an inspection by an independent, city-licensed and state-registered inspector. Inspections consist of 20 checks, such as for secure locks, protected electrical wiring and working smoke detectors.

Inspection prices typically range from $100 to over $200, depending on conditions. Tenant advocates say there is an inherent conflict of interest when a landlord selects and is responsible for paying an inspector.

“Landlords can choose their own private appraiser, and that gives the appraisers an incentive to go through the properties to get more business,” says Samantha Gowing, an attorney with the nonprofit legal organization Public Justice Center, which represented Victor in court.

Housing advocates say landlords must then upload a PDF of their passed inspection, signed by the inspector, to a city website, but the document is not reviewed by any system or person. While it’s unlikely many owners will exploit this loophole, several attorneys with the Public Justice Center said they’ve seen it happen.

According to Tammy Hawley, a spokeswoman for DHCD, the city estimates there are more than 66,000 rental properties.

More than 40 percent of properties that are “expected to be licensed” are unlicensed, Hawley said in an email. The agency did not specify the cause of this shortage, but the current system requires someone to proactively report an unlicensed property for DHCD to take notice, she added.

To strengthen enforcement, the city overhauled the database that allows the public to see which properties are licensed. State lawmakers also passed a bill in the Maryland General Assembly this year that gives renters more power to challenge poor housing conditions in court.

The full City Council is also scheduled to vote on the amended tenant rights bill, called the Strengthening Renters’ Safety Act, although it’s not yet clear when that vote will take place. If passed, the bill would go into effect in January 2026.

The bill aims to increase renter safety by establishing specific criteria to determine the city’s worst buildings and mandating semi-annual inspections of those buildings. It also requires landlords to actively provide proof of inspections to tenants – a move the MMHA, which represents rental property owners and managers, opposes. It has instead proposed that reports be provided upon request.

When the law was originally introduced in 2023, the Baltimore Housing Authority stated that staffing and budget issues were among the reasons the measures were not enforceable.

However, landlords say compliance is already difficult due to the shortcomings of the current system.

“The current system is not user-friendly for landlords,” said Kathy Howard, general counsel at Regional Management, a company that manages properties in and around Baltimore.

Regional Management has struggled to obtain licenses for properties for years, she said, but a DHCD web portal launched in 2022 has made it a labor-intensive process for the company to keep its units’ registrations up to date.

More awareness needed

Even after six years, the lack of education about the rental licensing system and the protections it is supposed to offer tenants is still a problem, says Shah.

In March, several buildings in Highlandtown caught fire and three people died, including two young children. The building permit for the building where the people died had expired and the smoke detectors were not working, one of the key requirements for a rental license to be inspected. The building’s owner and management did not comment on why the building permit had expired.

If a property is unlicensed, the tenant has the right to withhold rent and not be evicted. If the property is licensed but the tenant has reason to believe it should not be, things are more complicated.

The ordinance lists several reasons why a license could be revoked, but does not provide a formal process by which a tenant can blame landlords for having a license when they shouldn’t. Hawley, the authority spokesman, said tenants “should report these concerns through the city’s 311 system.”

Tenants can contact the DHCD, but there is no legal requirement to pressure the agency to revoke a license, independently inspect a property or require a new inspection. Gowing has done this outreach herself several times on behalf of clients, but said she has had mixed results.

The DHCD said it was not immediately able to provide figures on the number of rental licenses revoked.

“Tenants have no right to challenge a licence if it was issued fraudulently,” Gowing said.

Some community organizations are making great efforts to raise awareness through training on tenants’ rights and a project on tenants’ rights to advice.

Victor, the Brooklyn father, said he never knew his apartment was unlicensed and didn’t know he could look it up online. Without his lawyer and another government employee he met by chance, he probably never would have found out, he said.

Although the case against them was dismissed, Victor’s family decided to move out of their Brooklyn apartment. They have been living in Glen Burnie for about four months now, paying more than double what they were before, but in a recently renovated apartment with a landlord Victor considers lucky.

However, the rent he paid for the previous, unlicensed apartment has not been recovered. It is unclear if the apartment has been repaired. And as of this month, the property is still unlicensed.