Help House Family Evicted for Landlord's Violation
Donation protected
Our family was given 24 hours notice before being evicted from our home by the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs, for violations our landlord committed. We are a working class family of four with two young children, 2 and 5 years old. Please help us to secure permanent housing for our family in these difficult times.
Like many families we have struggled to find affordable housing in the county where my father and I both grew up, and where my wife and I both work. I, Nathan Feinberg, am a teaching assistant for Special Education and Math with Montgomery County Public Schools, working at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, where I also graduated from. My wife is a pre-school and Kindergarten teacher at the Barrie School which is just down the street from my high school on Layhill road.
Several year ago, after being priced out of most traditional rentals, we began looking for basement apartments to rent from private homeowners. However, after three years our previous landlords refused to renew our lease last November. COVID rules restricted them from making large increase in rent (they had previously been raising our rent about 10% each year since we had moved in), and so they the refused to renew our lease and simply moved in a new family at a higher cost instead. After months of searching we found another basement apartment and thought we could finally have secure housing again. We were very wrong.
A few months after moving in our new landlords began doing major construction on the house while we were living there. They were carving the house up into multiple rental units, and installing unsafe wiring in a home where the power would already frequently go out just from using the microwave, or vacuuming the floors. The situation became imminently dangerous when the landlords decided to build a third kitchen in a cramped corner of a gutted out closet in the laundry room with no ventilation. This fire hazard was being built on the opposite side of the wall from our daughters’ bedroom.
We attempted to speak with the landlords who live in the upstairs portion of the house about the unsafe construction they were engaging in. We were simply told “Don’t worry, it is all safe, we take responsibility. If there is a fire we take responsibility.” But what good is responsibility if your children’s bedroom is on fire? I asked the landlords directly if they had secured permits or had the work inspected and they simply lied and said they had. There were no records of any permits for the property since 2012, and the property owners had just bought the home in 2020.
While we were hesitant to involve the County, we simply could not allow our family’s lives to be put in danger by the landlords’ desire to squeeze ever more money out of the property. We were already paying them $1,500 a month – likely more than half their mortgage – and had never missed or been late on a payment. But apparently it wasn’t enough.
We attempted to report the construction to the Department of Permitting Services. The landlords lied to the first inspector that came, claiming they were only fixing leaking plumbing. I provided photographic evidence to the inspector of the work being done in the laundry room, which was a shared space we had a legal right to enter. Despite sending dozens of photographs and offering to testify publicly about the work I had seen; the building inspector insisted he could not enter the home nor issue a work stoppage order, pressuring us to seek a housing inspector instead.
Instead, the inspector repeatedly pressured us to contact the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) to get a housing inspection, as he had noted the landlords also did not have a rental license for the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) we were renting. He insisted this was the only way they could gain access and stop the unsafe construction. When the housing inspector came, however, they condemned our unit and gave us 24-hours to vacate while the landlords received only small fines.
The reason given was that our windows were too small for egress, yet the landlords upstairs had the same size windows in their own bedrooms. There’s, I was told, were grandfathered in, ours were not. The alleged “life safety issue” was merely a legal technicality. We lived in an above ground, walk out basement. We had our own door to exit the home and in fact had a shorter and quicker egress route than the homeowners who were allowed to remain comfortably housed while we were thrown out on a day’s notice.
Initially we were advised by the same county agency that evicted us to take our family to a homeless shelter in the middle of a pandemic, and e-mailed a few Zillow links to find a new place. Only after we contacted a majority of the members of the Montgomery County Council and reached out to the media to share our story were we given any meaningful help. This consisted of a small hotel room where we have been living ever since and a stipend for moving costs. HERE IS THE WUSA9 NEWS REPORT on our eviction.
As I told the reporter when the inspector returned the following day to enforce our eviction “The message they are sending to renters in this county is clear. If your landlord is breaking the law, keep your mouth shut. Do not report. Because you are the one who will end up being homeless.” This, sadly, is the consequence of ignoring an affordable housing crisis for decades; and of having laws, policies and public agencies designed to protect negligent landlords at the expense of renters.
For example, one of the Council Members informed me that a new law (bill 18-19) had been passed to require landlords to cover the costs of relocation when a tenant is evicted due to the landlord’s negligence. However, DHCA informed me that they could not enforce this law because it only applied to units that were “licenseable” and mine was not considered “licenseable.” In other words, because the county determined the unit was so bad it couldn’t even qualify to get a license, because the landlord’s violations were so egregious, that means the landlord is left off the hook and not responsible at all for the costs inflicted on my family. This, from an agency that claims to protect renters.
How many families are living right now with unsafe conditions even worse than our own? I have spoken to housing advocates that report speaking with tenants contending with mold, dilapidated structures, even gas leaks, that beg them not to report to DHCA for fear of being evicted and ending up homeless. My family’s experience is proof those fears are quite well founded.
Imagine the family who is not familiar with the County Council, or that has limited English proficiency. This system encourages predatory landlords to seek out the most vulnerable tenants, and then gives them free reign to abuse those tenants with the threat that if they report any violations they risk being unhoused themselves. It is a gross injustice enforced by our own County Government.
The most recent numbers from the county show that there are only 441 licensed ADUs (which most basement apartments would be qualified as). In reality, there are likely thousands of such units through out the County, most that do not meet code and whose tenants will be evicted if they ever report any violations to the county. Meanwhile the landlord will get a slap on the wrist for even the most egregious of violations.
These illegal, unlicensed units are openly advertised on Facebook Marketplace, on Craig’s List, in local newspapers and elsewhere. And yet the County puts no effort into enforcing the law or holding landlords accountable. Instead, they place the responsibility on vulnerable tenants to report, and then punish them with homelessness when they do. This is the reality of low-income housing in Montgomery County.
Our first priority must be to secure housing for our family, which is the reason we are reaching out to community for help in this fundraiser. But following that we are committed to working tirelessly to address the grave housing injustices that occur regularly in our county.
Our laws need to address the reality on the ground, not the abstract notions of politicians. Our county agencies must make housing justice the foundation of their approach to enforcement, and if the will not they must be abolished and remade anew so that they will.
Renters must no longer be subjected to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions by unscrupulous landlords seeking to extract wealth from working families. And no family should ever have to fear being made homeless when their landlords break the law. Anything less is unacceptable.
Like many families we have struggled to find affordable housing in the county where my father and I both grew up, and where my wife and I both work. I, Nathan Feinberg, am a teaching assistant for Special Education and Math with Montgomery County Public Schools, working at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, where I also graduated from. My wife is a pre-school and Kindergarten teacher at the Barrie School which is just down the street from my high school on Layhill road.
Several year ago, after being priced out of most traditional rentals, we began looking for basement apartments to rent from private homeowners. However, after three years our previous landlords refused to renew our lease last November. COVID rules restricted them from making large increase in rent (they had previously been raising our rent about 10% each year since we had moved in), and so they the refused to renew our lease and simply moved in a new family at a higher cost instead. After months of searching we found another basement apartment and thought we could finally have secure housing again. We were very wrong.
A few months after moving in our new landlords began doing major construction on the house while we were living there. They were carving the house up into multiple rental units, and installing unsafe wiring in a home where the power would already frequently go out just from using the microwave, or vacuuming the floors. The situation became imminently dangerous when the landlords decided to build a third kitchen in a cramped corner of a gutted out closet in the laundry room with no ventilation. This fire hazard was being built on the opposite side of the wall from our daughters’ bedroom.
We attempted to speak with the landlords who live in the upstairs portion of the house about the unsafe construction they were engaging in. We were simply told “Don’t worry, it is all safe, we take responsibility. If there is a fire we take responsibility.” But what good is responsibility if your children’s bedroom is on fire? I asked the landlords directly if they had secured permits or had the work inspected and they simply lied and said they had. There were no records of any permits for the property since 2012, and the property owners had just bought the home in 2020.
While we were hesitant to involve the County, we simply could not allow our family’s lives to be put in danger by the landlords’ desire to squeeze ever more money out of the property. We were already paying them $1,500 a month – likely more than half their mortgage – and had never missed or been late on a payment. But apparently it wasn’t enough.
We attempted to report the construction to the Department of Permitting Services. The landlords lied to the first inspector that came, claiming they were only fixing leaking plumbing. I provided photographic evidence to the inspector of the work being done in the laundry room, which was a shared space we had a legal right to enter. Despite sending dozens of photographs and offering to testify publicly about the work I had seen; the building inspector insisted he could not enter the home nor issue a work stoppage order, pressuring us to seek a housing inspector instead.
Instead, the inspector repeatedly pressured us to contact the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) to get a housing inspection, as he had noted the landlords also did not have a rental license for the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) we were renting. He insisted this was the only way they could gain access and stop the unsafe construction. When the housing inspector came, however, they condemned our unit and gave us 24-hours to vacate while the landlords received only small fines.
The reason given was that our windows were too small for egress, yet the landlords upstairs had the same size windows in their own bedrooms. There’s, I was told, were grandfathered in, ours were not. The alleged “life safety issue” was merely a legal technicality. We lived in an above ground, walk out basement. We had our own door to exit the home and in fact had a shorter and quicker egress route than the homeowners who were allowed to remain comfortably housed while we were thrown out on a day’s notice.
Initially we were advised by the same county agency that evicted us to take our family to a homeless shelter in the middle of a pandemic, and e-mailed a few Zillow links to find a new place. Only after we contacted a majority of the members of the Montgomery County Council and reached out to the media to share our story were we given any meaningful help. This consisted of a small hotel room where we have been living ever since and a stipend for moving costs. HERE IS THE WUSA9 NEWS REPORT on our eviction.
As I told the reporter when the inspector returned the following day to enforce our eviction “The message they are sending to renters in this county is clear. If your landlord is breaking the law, keep your mouth shut. Do not report. Because you are the one who will end up being homeless.” This, sadly, is the consequence of ignoring an affordable housing crisis for decades; and of having laws, policies and public agencies designed to protect negligent landlords at the expense of renters.
For example, one of the Council Members informed me that a new law (bill 18-19) had been passed to require landlords to cover the costs of relocation when a tenant is evicted due to the landlord’s negligence. However, DHCA informed me that they could not enforce this law because it only applied to units that were “licenseable” and mine was not considered “licenseable.” In other words, because the county determined the unit was so bad it couldn’t even qualify to get a license, because the landlord’s violations were so egregious, that means the landlord is left off the hook and not responsible at all for the costs inflicted on my family. This, from an agency that claims to protect renters.
How many families are living right now with unsafe conditions even worse than our own? I have spoken to housing advocates that report speaking with tenants contending with mold, dilapidated structures, even gas leaks, that beg them not to report to DHCA for fear of being evicted and ending up homeless. My family’s experience is proof those fears are quite well founded.
Imagine the family who is not familiar with the County Council, or that has limited English proficiency. This system encourages predatory landlords to seek out the most vulnerable tenants, and then gives them free reign to abuse those tenants with the threat that if they report any violations they risk being unhoused themselves. It is a gross injustice enforced by our own County Government.
The most recent numbers from the county show that there are only 441 licensed ADUs (which most basement apartments would be qualified as). In reality, there are likely thousands of such units through out the County, most that do not meet code and whose tenants will be evicted if they ever report any violations to the county. Meanwhile the landlord will get a slap on the wrist for even the most egregious of violations.
These illegal, unlicensed units are openly advertised on Facebook Marketplace, on Craig’s List, in local newspapers and elsewhere. And yet the County puts no effort into enforcing the law or holding landlords accountable. Instead, they place the responsibility on vulnerable tenants to report, and then punish them with homelessness when they do. This is the reality of low-income housing in Montgomery County.
Our first priority must be to secure housing for our family, which is the reason we are reaching out to community for help in this fundraiser. But following that we are committed to working tirelessly to address the grave housing injustices that occur regularly in our county.
Our laws need to address the reality on the ground, not the abstract notions of politicians. Our county agencies must make housing justice the foundation of their approach to enforcement, and if the will not they must be abolished and remade anew so that they will.
Renters must no longer be subjected to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions by unscrupulous landlords seeking to extract wealth from working families. And no family should ever have to fear being made homeless when their landlords break the law. Anything less is unacceptable.
Co-organizers (2)
Nathan Feinberg
Organizer
Silver Spring, MD
Tino Fragale
Co-organizer