Squatting in Maryland is not a crime epidemic — it's a housing crisis
When news headlines spotlight 'squatters' occupying homes in Maryland, it's easy to respond with punitive measures. But usually, behind every story of someone we're calling a 'squatter' occupying a vacant property is a larger crisis: rising housing expenses, declining wages, and a generational commitment to sabotaging our social safety net.
Squatting in Maryland isn't new, but recent viral videos and sensationalized news stories have raised concerns about it as a growing threat to property owners and neighborhood safety. This framing is misguided. This isn't about relative 'bad actors.' It is about systemic failings forcing people into dire situations.
If we are to understand the causes for the rise of squatting, we must discuss the absence of affordable housing. The Maryland housing market is increasingly out of reach for low- and moderate-income residents. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a full-time worker earning minimum wage in Maryland would need to work 100 hours a week just to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. And it is even worse in Baltimore, Prince George's County and Montgomery County, with decades of rent increases far outpacing wage growth.
Public investments in housing have simultaneously dwindled. Federal housing assistance has not kept pace with housing needs, and only one in four eligible households will get help. Maryland also has patchy eviction protection policies and inconsistent enforcement. When individuals slip through the cracks, informal housing alternatives, including squatting, emerge as survival practices.
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To be clear, squatting is not a permanent fix, nor should it be glorified. However, we have to stop viewing it as an inconvenience to be legally addressed, and instead, tackle the source of the issue: inequity. A large portion of those seeking shelter in vacant structures are leaving unsafe housing conditions, fleeing domestic violence or are recently evicted. Some are young adults leaving foster care. Some are people with disabilities or unemployed. The commonality is affordable and stable housing.
Squatting is then the visible end of an iceberg. The underbelly of that iceberg includes systems flaws, including a stripped-down social safety net, defunding of mental health services and the criminalization of poverty. And Maryland is not alone. All over the country, municipalities are evicting encampments without solutions, states are passing laws to criminalize homelessness, and federal programs are both inadequate.
The erosion of affordable housing is not incidental; it is the result of policy decisions. Since the 1980s, Democratic and Republican administrations have prioritized tax credits for housing development rather than aggressively building deeply affordable public housing and have not established units for the lowest-income sector. We have a plethora of buildings developed through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), but none of the housing is operationalized at the highest need.
Maryland stands at a fork in the road. We can continue excursions in pathologizing poverty and depend upon law enforcement to make them go away. Or we can truly invest in good, durable options, such as expanding Housing First programs, establishing statewide rent stabilization policies, and building deeply affordable housing, not just housing for young people/new workers or market-rate apartments with several units subsidized.
This will take political will and courage. This will mean rejecting the notion that housing instability and homelessness are the consequence of individual dysfunction. This will mean accepting that housing, beyond being a commodity, is a human right.
We also must stop using the term 'squatters' and implying that they are 'stealing' homes. In most cases, these homes have been abandoned – some in foreclosure limbo, and most owned by absentee owners. The real theft is not around people working to survive; it is a lack of accountability for not honoring the public will to care for others.
If Maryland truly wants to be a model on this front, it cannot rely solely on viral fear-based slogans or strategic, piecemealed solutions, but instead needs an audacious, justice-based housing agenda that prioritizes that all individuals, no matter income levels, have a safe and secure place they can call home.
Squatting is not an epidemic. Inequity is the epidemic. If we want to stop homeless neighbors from occupying vacant buildings and homes, we need to give them real homes.
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