Philadelphia        We were looking forward to seeing the progress ACORN’s affiliate, Progressive Maryland, was making by employing our organizing model since early in 2026.  Craig Robbins, ACORN’s Field Coordinator, had worked with PM leadership to help hire and train five organizers and put them into organizing drives.  The field staff had hardened at three, who we met in the organizing center in an office park somewhere outside of Baltimore in Prince George County.  They shared with us the progress of their local groups, most of which were tenant-based in various parts of the county as well as Baltimore.

As we began talking about the normal run of tenant issues from mold to garbage to rents that are too darned high, we offered to connect the organizers to veteran organizers involved in eviction defense as well as some of ACORN Canada’s organizers who had pioneered campaigns on renovictions and demovictions in Toronto, Hamilton, and various cities in British Columbia.

As the organizers described a particular situation, I stopped the story short, and asked, “are you saying that in Maryland rent strikes are legal?”  They nodded in the affirmative.  It was complicated, as I heard then and investigated later, but winning the right to withhold rent is huge for ACORN tenant organizations everywhere around the globe.  We’re looking forward to testing whether we may have won something close to this in Britain with the new Renter’s Rights Act.

The Maryland situation is important for a number of reasons.  Montgomery, Prince George, and even Baltimore County suburbs are home to huge numbers of apartment complexes, which serve as the more affordable bedroom communities of the nation’s capital in Washington, DC.  The rents aren’t cheap, but given the much higher costs of rents and the shortage of available affordable units in the District, nearby areas in Virginia and Maryland are destinations.  Having a tactical and strategic weapon, like rent strikes, to deal with recalcitrant landlords is a rare opportunity.

The Maryland law doesn’t expressly make rent strikes legal, but offers tenants a pathway through the Rent Escrow Law through a court-approved procedure to withhold rent over habitability situations.  This is not a cure all for all landlord abuses and greed, but in the numerous cases of typical deferred maintenance, security, and public health challenges, tenants have an open road, if they are organized to travel it.

According to the Peoples’ Law Library of Maryland, here’s how it works:

  Notify the Landlord: You must notify your landlord about the conditions in writing.

  Give Reasonable Time: The landlord must be given a reasonable amount of time to make the repairs.

  File a Lawsuit/Escrow: If the repairs aren’t made, you can file a “Rent Escrow” action in your local District Court.

  Pay the Court: The judge will usually require you to deposit your rent directly into a court-administered escrow account instead of paying the landlord.

  Court Ruling: The court can order the repairs to be made, reduce your rent, or terminate your lease.

From what the PM organizers told us, sometimes the court orders the solution and often they have heard that tenants are refunded part of the rent held in the escrow fund.  Obviously, this procedure isn’t perfect.  It’s a long way from a blanket right for organized or individual tenants to have the right to withhold their rent and strike to protest conditions and pressure the landlord, but in the hands of organized tenant unions dealing with corporate owners of multiple properties numbering in the thousands, it is easy to image the organizing campaigns using this tool that could win huge victories.