Things started on a raw note – and ended that way too – at yesterday’s City Council’s hearing on Bill 25-0066, the only pending measure in Mayor Brandon Scott’s package of zoning deregulation legislation (the rest have been approved).

In between, there was passionate pro and con testimony and questions from committee members – including the 1st District’s Mark Parker, who asked if there was any data on apartment conversions in parts of the city that already allow them.

“One of the things that’s been lifted up is this concept of people seeking affordability – a homeowner seeking affordability by adding units, or seeking flexibility for taking care of additional family members and things like that, by adding units in their space,” Parker said.

“I’m curious, does the past, say, five or six years of conversions align or not align with that image?” he asked.

• DETAILED COVERAGE: Scott’s Zoning Deregulation Bills

But the frosty moments, that seemed to encapsulate the whole debate, came early on when Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton opened up about why her northwest district is so strongly opposed to the bill, which ends single-family-only zoning in residential districts city-wide and allows as many as four dwelling units on a lot.

“My area has a large concentration of those single [family] homes being converted in areas for different types of group homes. Distrust has just really started developing particularly with that,” she said. “I also have areas where there has been oversaturation of renters mixed with the vacant properties, and it has really become a problem.”

Those problems have been exacerbated by “predatory” landlords and “lack of code enforcement,” she said, asking Ty’lor Schnella, representing the mayor’s office, to address her concerns.

He began, instead, by cautioning her about her language.

“We have to be very careful around how we talk about our residents that rent homes, right? I think that there is a serious misconception of the average renter in Baltimore City,” he warned, going on to say how he is a renter who cares for his home. “I get the grass cut. I sometimes cut it myself.”

Committee Chair Ryan Dorsey joined in, observing that “this dichotomy between between multi-family and this reasonable accommodation is just such a glaring example of how kind of nonsensical our laws are.”

“I’m very familiar with all the different types of renters,” replied Middleton who, elected in 2007, is the Council’s longest serving member.

She went on to describe “a saturation of renters in areas that do not respect neighborhoods.” She told a story about how she and her husband, renters at the time, endured “a terrible discriminatory experience” when they tried to buy their first home.

Having faced similar challenges, she said, residents of the 6th District, which has a large number of Black homeowners, feel understandably protective of their neighborhoods.

“People are in those homes and in these communities because they worked hard to pick that environment,” she said. “They worked hard.”

Pointing to  Transform Baltimore, Baltimore’s last zoning overhaul (“It took four years, we can’t do this in one or two months”), Middleton said city leaders should take neighborhood differences into account.

“It’s a very aging, historical city,” she said. “And it is a city that has a history of deep discrimination that I’ve experienced.”

Speaking of Renters

Middleton apologized at the end of the hearing, during which several bill supporters said that they, too, had been offended by her language.

Her statement about renters “was really directed to the abundance of slumlords,” she said, explaining that she gets calls “every week, if not every day” from renters faced with unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

“It’s just deplorable, predatory conditions,” she continued. “They take advantage of the people that they put in these properties.”

“I have organizations that are trying to buy those certain blocks in areas that I represent that have a record – and they still are allowing them to buy these places,” she said, adding. “The area that I represent, I have not found one person that’s for this bill.”

“The area that I represent, I have not found one person that’s for this bill”  – Council Vice Chair Sharon Green Middleton.

Dorsey took issue with her statement, and said so as he closed out the hearing.

“It’s really hard for me to hear when somebody says ‘Nobody in my community says that they want this,’” he began.

“In my experience, that never represents the people who rent in a community, who know that they would benefit from having more places to choose from to rent, that know that they would benefit from greater landlord competition to try to provide better options for those folks,” he said. “And it never represents the renters who don’t already live in that community.”

Middleton appeared visibly irritated when Dorsey denounced opposition to the bill as coming from those clinging to zoning rules historically born out of racial segregation.

The single-family zoning rule that Bill 25-0066 wipes away, he said, “the principal purpose and tool of it is segregation . . .  a shame that we should be racing to slough off by doing away with any trace of the laws that that enacted.”

Impact on Immigrants

Their exchanges bookended a hearing that brought out some of the concerns committee member have about the legislation, which is aimed at increasing the city’s population by easing zoning rules seen as barriers to new multi-family housing.

Administration officials told Parker, of southeast’s 1st District, they would work on his request for information on the apartment conversions already occurring in the city. The freshman councilman told them he had already run the numbers for the residential R-8 zones, the designation for already dense rowhouse areas like his.

“For example, 14% of R-8 conversions in the last six years are owner-occupied and 86% are not,” he told them. “So, that’s just to get you a headstart on that inquiry.”

In the last six years, the overwhelming majority (86%) of conversions in Baltimore’s residential rowhouse (R-8) zones were not owner-occupied  – Councilman Mark Parker.

Depending on the kind of development the bill stimulates, he continued, it could have a negative impact on the residents in his district, home to a growing Latino population, some of whom are restricted to rental housing because they don’t have legal citizenship status.

“These folks are particularly vulnerable to slumlords, predatory landlords, unlicensed, unpermitted conversions, unlicensed rental units, and the safety considerations that come from that,” Parker pointed out.

He said the growth in his uniquely booming district (a 5,000 person increase from 2010 to 2020) came mostly from “taking vacant land and vacant buildings – empty buildings – and turning them into multi-family projects that help bring people and economic vitality and cultural diversity to our community.”

That process, he pointed out, brings “increased density, increased investment, increased vitality to historic communities without making changes or chopping up existing homes into multi-family homes.”

Housing People Actually Want

City agency representatives were on hand to testify on behalf of the high-priority Scott administration bill.

Schnella, deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Government relations, said the measure would result in more of the kind of housing that “people actually want: smaller, flexible, multi family homes.”

“For far too long, our zoning code has made it more difficult to produce this type of housing,” he said.

Prompted by Middleton (“I have not heard any discussion about code enforcement”) Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said her agency’s Special Investigations Unit would enforce existing laws against unlicensed rentals.

“For the first time in at least five years, we actually are on track to have all of our code enforcement positions filled and be back at capacity in the 70 to 72 range,” she said.

Several city residents testified in favor of the bill, including renter Will Fedder. Increasing the number of rental units in the city will help keep rents affordable, he asserted.

“I just signed a lease at about $1,600 – that’s a good deal right now for a two-bedroom unit,” Fedder said. “As a renter, it is not in my interest to support laws that support the existing status quo that protects my landlord from competition.”

“In many neighborhoods, these houses are far larger than what a single household needs, and too often, they still sit unused”  – David Bjorn Norman.

David Bjorn Norman said he supports the bill because it “creates a clear path for homes to contain two to four units when the structure can reasonably accept it.”

“In many neighborhoods, these houses are far larger than what a single household needs, and too often, they still sit unused, vacant or end up informally divided without proper safety standards,” he observed.

Joanna Diamond, Public Policy Director at Health Care for the Homeless, said this measure and the others in Scott’s package would “help strengthen families and support homelessness before it happens.”

“Nowhere in Baltimore can a person earning minimum wage afford a market rent efficiency apartment,” Diamond said.

Hurting, not Helping

Opponents, however, said the measure would hurt, not help, struggling city neighborhoods.

Representing the West North Avenue Development Authority, Christy Turner called the bill “a one-size fits all” approach that does not reflect the concerns of the 16 communities in its catchment area.

Calling the fact “alarming,” she noted that 56% of the city’s vacant building notices are located in the 40th Legislative District, which includes the West North venue area.

“Our community has voiced a strong preference for rowhome rehabilitation and low-rise, high-density development that fosters long term stability and home ownership,” Turner said.

“By relaxing these land use restrictions, this legislation could accelerate investor-driven acquisition and rental development,” she said, offering three alternatives to the bill’s city-wide approach.

She suggested “a pilot area to test this through community engagement, limiting the conversions to two units” and “establishing density percentages and caps to avoid a concentration in a particular neighborhood or area.”

Reservoir Hill’s Carson Ward was blunter.

Scott’s entire housing package “will hurt Black communities,” Ward said, charging that the city’s own poor code enforcement and weak renter protections led to the foreclosure crisis the Scott administration recently announced it is investigating.

“Rather than resolving Baltimore’s racist real estate landscape,” Christina Schoppert Devereaux, staff attorney with the Community Law Center. “Loosening regulations for for-profit development and absentee landlords and inciting economic shock and increased land value to the benefit of REITs . . . is not undoing harm, it is compounding harm.”

“The core demographic seems to be young professionals who will live in one-bedroom apartments and help grow the city”  – Chrisitna Schoppert Devereaux, Community Law Center.

Schoppert also said the bill will not address the needs of low to moderate-income Baltimoreans.

“The core demographic seems to be young professionals who will live in one-bedroom apartments and help grow the city,” she said.

Echoing the other speakers’ critiques, Mereida Goodman, president of the Garwyn Oaks United Neighbors Association, offered advice for lawmakers she believes are ignoring concerns about the bill in the city’s diverse neighborhoods.

“I think the Council should take field trips and get out to everybody’s district,” Goodman said.