Renters' rights advocates are asking Howard County's incoming administration to create an Office of Tenant and Landlord Affairs. They want the office to collect rental data, enforce the rules, hold landlords accountable and educate tenants and landlords on what a lease actually requires.
The County Council would still have to approve any office. The Howard County Housing Alliance is leading the effort, WBAL reported, and County Executive-elect Vanessa Atterbeary has voiced support. About 30% of county residents live in rental properties, by that account, and WMAR 2 News reported that the county's annual rental survey relies mostly on data from landlords. Canvassers say they have already heard what those landlord figures leave out.
Four Jobs, Then a Council Vote
The alliance isn't asking for a task force that files a report and goes home. Advocates want a standing office, and they have already split the work. WMAR reported that they want it to cover data collection, enforcement, accountability and education.
Carletta Hickman, executive director of the Columbia Housing Center, has said other Maryland counties already have offices of this kind and that Howard County can establish one too. Atterbeary's support came with a procedural next step. "It's something our transition team, when we get up and rolling, we are going to ask them to focus on our housing committee," she said, according to WBAL.
A committee focus isn't a department. Her comment doesn't come with a budget, staff or an ordinance. WBAL reported the limit that still sits on the idea: the County Council would need to approve the proposal.
Advocates are already looking outside the county for a shape. WMAR reported that Montgomery County and Washington, D.C., are the examples they are following. Montgomery County's Office of Landlord-Tenant Affairs describes an office that educates tenants and landlords on their rights and responsibilities and offers free dispute-resolution services. That's a neighbor's account of its own shop. The enforcement and accountability pieces named in Howard County would still have to be written here.
What 12,000 Doors Turned Up
The case being carried toward that committee started on stoops. Tino Fragale of Everyday Canvassing said the group knocked on more than 12,000 doors across Howard County. Patch reported that canvassers heard about mold, pests, ignored maintenance requests and landlords who faced no real consequences.
The question that produced the clearest answer was bigger than a work order. Fragale said renters were asked what would make Howard County a better place to grow up. He told WMAR that "among those answers we heard a resounding yes to a one-stop shop."
A one-stop shop is the doorstep name for the office the Housing Alliance wants. One counter, in that telling, for a leak, a pest problem or a landlord who has stopped calling back, rather than a renter left to guess which county page applies. Ignored repairs, and landlords facing no real consequences, are what turn that counter from a convenience into an enforcement argument.
The door count is Everyday Canvassing's. So are the complaints. They are the fieldwork advocates are putting beside the proposal, as evidence that education and enforcement belong together. A renter who is told the rules and still can't get a response hasn't been given a remedy.
A Survey That Mostly Asks Landlords
Howard County already counts its rental market. The annual survey WMAR described is a reasonable way to track what owners say they charge. It is a weak way to learn what renters say they are living with.
Kristina Gray-Akpa said the county had not done a good job listening to renters and did not know the extent of their challenges. "So now we know, and so I think now we can act," she said.
She wasn't complaining that the county had never counted rents. She was saying it had not listened well enough to know how far the problems went. The proposed office follows that order. Data collection answers a survey that hears mostly from landlords. Enforcement and accountability answer the doors where people described consequences that never arrived. Education assumes both sides of a lease need something clearer than a property manager's voicemail.
Split those jobs across a handful of county pages and the renter Fragale described is back where the canvass found them, guessing where to go. The one-stop shop is the organizers' answer to that scavenger hunt.
Rents Above $2,100, and a Target Missed
The population on the other side of that survey is large, and the published figures don't all measure the same thing. WBAL's 30% figure is residents living in rental properties, not households. Counting households, Patch reported that renters account for about 30% of Howard County households. From 2020 to 2024, Patch reported, the county had approximately 35,000 renter households, and typical gross rent, utilities included, exceeded $2,100 a month.
HAND's Housing Indicator Tool reports that 29% of households were renters and that 48% of renters had unaffordable housing costs. A typical gross rent over $2,100 describes the market. The 48% figure describes households in it. On HAND's measure, nearly half of renters had housing costs the tool treated as unaffordable.
New homes haven't matched the county's own marks. HAND reports that Howard County built 569 housing units in 2025, while an estimated 1,714 units are needed annually to meet future demand. That year's production was roughly a third of the estimated annual need. Since 2022, the county has produced at least 3,883 units, short of a four-year target of 6,856.
A tenant and landlord office would not produce those units. If the council approved one, it would open into a market already short of its housing target, with the typical gross rent Patch reported above $2,100 and a large share of renters in costs HAND classifies as unaffordable. Scarcity doesn't create mold. It does narrow the options when a landlord doesn't call back.
The Counter Already Taking the Calls
The Columbia Housing Center has provided stopgap assistance to renters, WMAR reported. Hickman said her office handles renter concerns while filling a gap "that shouldn't exist in the first place," Patch reported. She has also said community organizations can't fill the need, and that the proposed county office can.
Mold, pests and unanswered repair requests are the kind of problems canvassers reported, and the kind of intake a housing center can absorb only up to a point. Hickman's capacity point is the sharper one. Community groups, in her account, cannot cover the need. The office advocates want is what she thinks can.
Everyday Canvassing went looking for the complaints. The center has been receiving them. Neither is the county office being proposed, which is the distinction Hickman keeps drawing. The next named step is the housing committee Atterbeary has flagged, and after that a County Council vote the proposal would still need. The complaints she described are already a nonprofit's to catch, in a county where about 30% of residents live in rental properties and where typical gross rent, utilities included, was reported above $2,100 a month.
