As housing prices and monthly rents soar, advocates, lawmakers and the Moore administration say they share a goal of protecting Maryland families in an unstable housing market, even as the state faces its own financial woes.
But that means balancing protections for renters and families while courting developers to build new housing units, at a time of shrinking federal funding. It’s a tough task, says Matt Hill, attorney at the Public Justice Center, which is part of the Renters United Maryland coalition, but he says renter protections and affordable housing efforts are “needed now more than ever.”
“People are living on a knife’s edge because of the lack of affordable housing, because of the lack of stability in the economy and in their own lives,” Hill said.
Matt Losak, executive director of the Montgomery County Renters Alliance, said federal cuts to safety nets like food assistance and Medicaid will also affect people’s ability to afford housing. People waiting for emergency housing assistance “are literally hanging on for dear life,” he said.
“When they cut social benefits, like rental assistance program money or the federal impacts of cutting HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) money, [they] are going to add to the pain and disaster being felt by people on the low end of the spectrum, and the vast majority of them are renters,” Losak said.
For veterans of the housing fight, most of the issues will be familiar, while some are likely to have a bigger stage — like proposed wrongful detainer legislation, to cut down on people wrongfully living on someone else’s property, better known as “squatting.”
Hill says some of the legislation proposed last year to expedite evictions in certain situations could have chipped away at due process for the person living in the space.
“We’re calling it the ‘Evict First, Ask Questions Later’ bills, because that’s really what the proposals are,” Hill said. “It’s going to allow for either the sheriff or the court to evict someone before they even had a chance to get a fair hearing.”
One bill that became law this year was Senate Bill 46, sponsored by Sen. Ron Watson (D- Prince George’s), which requires a hearing within 10 business days of a wrongful detainer complaint being filed. It took effect in October. Other wrongful detainer bills filed during the 2025 session.
Renters United Maryland said it anticipate other legislation that could threaten due process in eviction cases to reemerge in 2026, and worry that wrongful detainer bills could be used “as a tool for personal revenge.”
“Survivors of domestic abuse and their children are particularly at risk, as well as differently abled people. No matter the context of the allegation, Black women, who are already disproportionately affected by eviction, will suffer most under an evict-first approach,” the group said in a statement.
Emergency rental assistance
Advocates say they will push for a boost in funding for emergency rental assistance programs, particularly for a newly launched effort to keep lower-income families with kids housed during financial struggles.
Gov. Wes Moore (D) recently announced the opening of applications for the Community Schools Rental Assistance Program. It would let families of children in community schools, which have a relatively high number of low-income families, to get some extra money to help pay for housing when faced with eviction or utility cutoff because they are behind on their payments.
It’s a start, but not enough, advocates say: The program is limited to families in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Frederick, Montgomery, Prince George’s, Washington and Wicomico counties, and they say it is “critically underfunded.” The 2024 bill creating the program allowed the governor to allocate up to $10 million, but it was funded at half that this year.
“Kids can’t learn if they slept in a homeless shelter the night before, or have to constantly transfer schools,” said Renters United Maryland in its list of legislative priorities. “Maryland should fully fund this program to help roughly 9,375 residents avoid eviction.”
‘Lessons learned’
Moore and Maryland Housing Secretary Jake Day, meanwhile, said they will try again to streamline the housing development approval process to facilitate new development. The goal is to build new units across the state and reduce Maryland’s near 100,000 housing unit shortage, which state officials say contributes to the high housing costs in Maryland.
Administration officials say there were “lessons learned” during a rocky 2o25 session, when a relatively late start contributed to much of their housing package being scuttled.
Day began pitching Moore’s 2025 housing legislation to county officials in December 2024. That package, which aimed to tie housing development to areas with high job growth, immediately came under fire from county lobbyists who said it encroached on local decision making. It did not get a hearing until March, when it was heavily rewritten to grant vesting rights to developers, and ultimately died in a Senate committee as the session ended in April.
This year, Day has been working since August to get county officials on board with a bill to create “vesting rights” for developers, allowing them to keep the rights to develop a property once they have won approval for the project.
Some housing and renter advocates worry that the push for new housing comes at the expense of tenant protections, including the nearly 10-year effort to allow “good cause” evictions in the state.
“Our main concern is that that narrative not be used as a substitute for renter protections,” Losak said. “We are somewhat concerned of this idea that we can build our way into affordable ownership so that people don’t have to rent housing anymore.”
Renter advocates in recent years have been pushing bills that would let local jurisdictions decide whether to implement a “good cause” eviction policy, which requires a landlord to cite a specific reason why a tenant is getting evicted. The policy would be an option for counties under the bill, not a requirement.
Housing lobbyists say that regulations like good cause evictions or rent stabilization policies discourage developers from building in those areas.
A good cause bill passed the House in 2024, but died in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.
In 2025, the committee amended the bill to require that local jurisdictions choose either rent-control measures or good cause evictions. It was seen as an attempt to satisfy tenant advocates and developers, but Losak and others saw the amendment as a “poison pill” and momentum for the bill died.
Losak hopes the bill can come to a vote “in an acceptable form” this upcoming session.
“They may bring it to a vote, but if it includes poison amendments, like a requirement that local jurisdictions weaken rent stabilization programs, then it will be unacceptable,” Losak said. “That just becomes a vehicle to torpedo stable housing programs for renters.”
One big difference from recent years, Losak noted, is that 2026 is an election year, which could help the bill get over the finish line after almost a decade.
“We’re heading into an election year. The public … are more attuned to good cause now than they’ve ever been,” he said. “I think elected officials are aware that the public is concerned and that might have more influence this year … I think they’ll have to make a calculus as to whether it’s worth it if they play games.”