A College Park landlord and several student tenants are suing the city council over claims that student tenants seeking to rent single-family homes are discriminated against, demanding the city pay $100 million in damages, court documents show.
The 27-page filing seeks to block a rent stabilization ordinance enacted in 2005 that strictly limits the rent landlords can charge to tenants in single-family homes. The suit accuses seven council members who voted for the ordinance of violating several state and county statutes and the federal Fair Housing Act, asking the court to strike down the ordinance because the city has no jurisdiction. Mayor Stephen Brayman was also named in the suit.
The ordinance, which can set rent ceilings of no higher than 1 percent of a single-family home's value, underscores the city's energetic attempts to limit single-family home rentals downtown in an attempt to shore up owner-occupied housing. Council members have long said the rental market inflates housing costs beyond what homeowners can afford.
If the landlord - identified in the suit as Alan Tyler - is successful at convincing a judge the city overstepped its bounds, it could deal a serious blow to the city's goal of returning single-family homes to city residents. But city attorney Suellen Ferguson, who strongly denied the claims made in the suit, said she was confident the city's intentions were within the law.
"The way the state government allows a city to exercise their powers is through an ordinance. It's been in writing, and it's done in public, so the residents know what the council's doing and can comment on what the council's doing," said Ferguson, who is not representing the city in the case. "We deny all the allegations, and the city believes that what it has done is justified and appropriate."
Although the suit alleges "the ordinance also has a disparate impact on those individuals in single-family dwellings, the majority of whom are young, unmarried students," University of Maryland School of Law professor Brenda Bratton Blom said the suit's claims would be difficult to prove.
"The problem of creating stock of affordable housing is a huge issue in our country," said Blom, an expert in housing law. "It appears to me that they're alleging, fundamentally, that this is an act of eminent domain, of taking without justification. That would be a hard thing for the plaintiff to prove. ... The Supreme Court has set a pretty high standard."
Blom, who read the lawsuit but was not familiar with the city's ordinance, said she was not aware of many jurisdictions using rent stabilization as a means of setting affordable housing, though she admitted it is not unheard of. Nearby Takoma also uses rent stabilization to keep rent prices affordable, though its law limits every housing unit other than single-family homes.
"The question is, are there University of Maryland students that would fit the reformulated, the rent control standards, and if so would they be excluded from access?" Blom said. "In the implementation, is there discrimination?"
According to the suit, the ordinance was passed with the intent "to encourage the University of Maryland and the private sector to provide suitable housing to meet the needs of undergraduate and graduate students on or near campus" and "to strengthen College Park neighborhoods by reducing the number of single-family homes that are rental properties."
But, the plaintiffs argue, the ordinance was passed by the council "for the wrongful purpose of driving the student-renters out of residential neighborhoods and in isolated high rises that they exempted from the rent control ordinance."
Tyler, the landlord who filed the suit, declined to comment.
College Park's rent stabilization ordinance - which excludes high-density housing such as apartments - was passed in May of 2005 and enacted the next month. In August of that year, the city amended the ordinance to change the composition of the rent stabilization board.
Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com
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