This morning's Baltimore Sun reports that a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates has introduced a bill that would prohibit landlords from issuing civil arrest warrants for tenants sued by their landlords for less than $5,000 in rent. The bill, introduced by Delegate Bilal Ali (who represents me in the Maryland House of Delegates), seeks to limit a practice which Kushner Companies employed at least 1,250 times from 2013 until August 2017. Judges during this period awarded the Kushner family business $5.4 million in judgments against tenants whose debts in unpaid rent averaged $4,400.
Jared Kushner’s business owns 17 apartment complexes in Maryland, mostly in Baltimore City and surrounding Baltimore County. During this period of 2013 to 2017, Kushner’s business sought arrests for 105 tenants who failed to appear in court, of whom 20 were actually arrested.
Delegate Ali, in introducing his proposed legislation, explained:
Regressive policies that hurt and even incarcerate the poor have historically been the norm. This bill prohibits policies that were developed to hurt poor communities and jail poor residents.
Jared Kushner was CEO of Kushner Companies, parent company of Westminster Management which manages, either directly or by other affiliated corporate entities, until January 19, 2017, the day before his father-in-law’s inauguration.
Delegate Ali’s bill would change existing Maryland law that allows landlords who are suing tenants for unpaid rent to ask a judge to arrest a tenant who has failed to appear twice in court. If a landlord wins a monetary judgment against a tenant (most often the tenant has failed to appear), the landlord may summon the tenant back to court to answer questions about assets and income. If the tenant fails to appear, the judge may issue a summons to the tenant asking why the tenant should not be held in contempt of court. If the tenant again fails to appear, the judge can order the tenant’s civil arrest, regardless of the amount of the judgment. Several of the tenants whom Jared had arrested told the Sun they had never received the summonses from the court.
Delegate Ali’s bill is just the latest in Jared’s legal troubles in Maryland that have arisen since the Baltimore Sun first reported last August how Jared operates as a landlord. This past Friday, January 26th, a federal judge, in a suit originally brought in Baltimore City Circuit Court by two of Jared’s tenants, ordered Kushner to reveal the names of the investors of Westminster Management by February 9th. The state court had transferred the suit to federal court after Westminster claimed that none of its owners were Maryland residents. Westminster told the court that its owners included Jared and his brother Josh Kushner, and their parents Charles and Seryl Kushner, and that none of these Kushners reside in Maryland, but refused to identify any investors who might be residents of Maryland. The tenants’ law suit alleges that the Kushners charged them illegal fees and threatened to evict them if they failed to pay.
This past October, the Sun revealed that Kushner’s landlord business was under investigation by the state attorney general for illegally charging their tenants illegal fees and evicting them when they don’t pay.