Not just cruel, but unconstitutional and out of step with much of the rest of the country.

That’s how tenant advocates describe laws on the books in Baltimore City and Baltimore County that turn a person’s possessions over to the landlord the minute an eviction is served. The door is locked, the tenant is out, and the landlord can do whatever they want with what’s inside.

That’s not how it’s done in other places.

“Abandonment ordinances” are generally balanced with provisions giving tenants a “reclamation period” during which they can arrange to come back and collect whatever they might want or need.

“Reclamation periods are common throughout the country,” Public Justice Center staff attorney Albert Turner said, addressing a Baltimore County Council work session on Tuesday.

The council is considering a bill, sponsored by Mike Ertel (D, 6th), to update the eviction process that includes a required 14-day notice before an eviction.

Advocates are calling for more – an amendment that mandates a 14-day reclamation period after an eviction is served.

“Over 26 states throughout the nation have reclamation periods that extend well beyond the 14-day requirement that we’re asking,” Turner continued. “West Virginia has 30 days. Pennsylvania has 30 days.”

In Baltimore City, he and other tenant advocates are pushing for a reclamation period that lasts seven business days. The landlords’ lobby is opposed to the idea in both jurisdictions.

“We’re in the business of renting apartments and units. We’re in the business of of eliminating vacancies,” attorney Aaron Greenfield, who represents the Maryland Multi Housing Association (MMHA), told county lawmakers.

• Bill would change law that allows Baltimore landlords to lock out evicted tenants and keep their possessions (8/25/26)

“If someone has had all the notices, and they still don’t pay their rent, we want them out and want to comply with the date the sheriff gives us,” Greenfield said.

Turner gave a blunt response to his remarks:

“What MMHA and the landlords are actually asking you, when they talk about a ‘lock and leave’ process, is unconstitutional,” he said.

“That is exactly how Baltimore City does their evictions process, and that was exactly the process which the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has said was unconstitutional,” Turner added.

Costly Case

Turner was referring to the 2024 ruling in Todman v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore that found the city violated the Fourth Amendment’s due process property rights of Baltimore renters.

The city was ordered to pay Marshall and Tiffany Todman, whose personal possessions were taken while they were at work, $186,000 in damages, plus nearly $844,000 in attorneys’ fees.

After listening to the way landlords and lawmakers were talking about Todman, James R. Benjamin Jr., the Baltimore County Attorney, said he felt the need to “clarify” the ruling

The court, he explained, said that giving people due process to protect their personal property interest meant giving them “notice and an opportunity to be heard.”

The court not only held “that the Todmans were entitled to individual notice that their property was at risk,” Benjamin said, but also “procedures by which they could protect their interests.”

Jurisdictions have learned that the most efficient procedure to accomplish this, testified Catherine Baxter of Maryland Legal Aid, is a meaningful opportunity to retrieve their possessions.

“Rather than making the parties go into a courthouse and say, ‘I did intend to abandon this old broken couch. I didn’t intend to abandon my grandmother’s ashes,’ what they do is use that reclamation period,” Baxter said.

The appeals court held that Baltimore’s “abandonment ordinance” violated Fourth Amendment due process rights.

Speaking against the reclamation period was MMHA President Jim Johnson, who predicted reclamation periods would lead to “violence, threats, aggravation and turmoil.”

“What we’re expecting under a reclamation proposal is a 19- or 21-year-old maintenance man to meet a former tenant who is aggravated, annoyed, in many cases threatening and violent to handle an eviction,” said Johnson, Baltimore County Police Chief between 2007 and 2017.

The Public Justice Center’s Turner said jurisdictions with reclamation periods “have not had an increase in crime or any type of public safety issues.”

“This actually tamps down tempers,” he said. “You can tell them, ‘You actually do have a right to come back and get your property,’ as opposed to right now where we say, ‘You’re evicted and, also, all your property is lost.’”

4,600 Evictions a Year

Also speaking before the county council in favor of the reclamation period was Tekemia Dorsey, president of the Randallstown NAACP.

“This is more than just an eviction notification issue. It is a poverty issue, a family issue and a leadership issue,” Dorsey said, noting that 4,600 evictions are executed in Baltimore County each year.

“Behind those numbers are parents, seniors, working families and children,” she continued. “Eviction can disrupt education and employment, increase homelessness and housing instability, and push families deeper into poverty.”

The testimony given in Towson Tuesday was similar to the back-and-forth at a City Council committee hearing in Baltimore last week.

“Eviction is emotionally damaging. It’s actually heartbreaking. But why should a burden be place on an already overburdened landlord?” said David Cahan of the Mount Washington Group. “When rent isn’t paid, our dedicated team members can’t pay their own rent.”

Opponents said the waiting period would pose an unfair hardship by making property owners wait longer to eject non-paying tenants who’d already had ample notice that eviction was coming.

“Where’s the compassion for the landlord?” declared Baltimore landlord Ned Carey. “We’re the real victim here!”

“Where’s the compassion for the landlord? We’re the real victim here!”  – Baltimore landlord, Ned Carey.

Sherry Harrington testified that her notice of eviction came not weeks or months before the sheriff arrived, but on the very same day – via a phone call she received at work from her daughter.

“I asked the property manager, ‘Could I please get my mother’s urn?’” the 60-year-old recalled. “I lost my mother three years ago. All I wanted was her urn at that moment and my medication.”

No, she said she was told. When pressed, the property manager said she might be allowed inside “when the trash-out people come.”

“Where’s the humanity with that?” Harrington asked, turning to the landlords in the hearing room. “You’ve waited this long, seven more days is not going to kill you.”

“Where’s the humanity? Seven more days is not going to kill you!” Baltimore resident Sherry Harrington.

Housing attorney Brenda Hurford described an eviction that “haunts me to this day,” witnessed when she previously worked in Maryland for a large property management company.

No one was home when she and the sheriff entered the apartment that still had furniture, a stroller, diapers and unwrapped gifts from a baby shower.

“I finally reached the mother who was at the hospital in active labor. I could hear the panic in her voice,” recalled Hurford.

She described how everything the family owned was taken away – then grabbed by neighbors and strangers – before the woman could return.

Sunny Desai, a housing attorney from Washington, D.C., said the city’s seven-day reclamation law works well, allowing tenants the time to arrange a rendezvous with the landlord to retrieve some things.

“They are not trying to get large furniture or TVs or jewelry our clients of very little means,” he said. “They just want photographs, heirlooms, things that are irreplaceable.”