Residents of the Marylander Condominiums could be evicted any day after a federal judge rebuffed a last-ditch effort to halt the proceedings, putting the future of the condo in jeopardy as a nearby homeless encampment is allowed to stand.
The decision comes after Prince George’s County, Md., a Democratic stronghold in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., deemed half the units “unfit for human habitation” due to damage allegedly caused by the encampment, which the county tolerated for more than two years. When a state judge authorized the county to evict the residents of those units, the condo filed a lawsuit in federal court requesting a preliminary injunction. But federal district court judge Ajmel Quereshi denied the request, citing precedents that limit federal judges’ oversight of state courts.
He also argued that the county’s interest in keeping buildings up to code could outweigh the interests of residents facing displacement—even though it was the county’s own policies that allegedly caused the code violations in the first place.
“While the Plaintiff has a legitimate interest in ensuring that the unit owners it represents remain in their residences, the County also has a legitimate interest in ensuring that its residents reside in buildings that are fit for human habitation,” Quereshi wrote in a March 27 order. “Were the County not to enforce its housing provisions, residents would be subject to the desires of landlords, as well as condominium associations, who may provide substandard housing to individuals who cannot afford other options.”
At a March 23 hearing on the pending evictions, the county said that it would begin forced evacuations within two weeks if Quereshi gave the greenlight. The timeline suggests that residents could be removed at any time, though the county’s appetite for further coercion remains an open question.
Phil Dawit, the managing director of the condo’s property management firm, Quasar, said the sheriff’s office had not yet physically evicted residents. Instead, the county appears to be pestering owners in the hopes that they will leave voluntarily, in one case calling a resident 10 times before he finally agreed to leave, according to Dawit and to Beverley Habada, a member of the condominium’s board.
The Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office told the Washington Free Beacon that “no date has been set” for the evictions, but declined to comment on other steps that had been taken to encourage residents to leave.
Meanwhile, the encampment has continued to encroach on the property. When Quasar repaired a hole in the fence that vagrants had been using to access the complex, residents of the encampment began using ladders and downed trees to bypass the barrier, according to photos shared with Free Beacon.
Such intrusions were a major factor in a state judge’s decision to place the condo on fire watch in March. County officials argued that the vagrants had a habit of starting fires around the property and could mess with an electrical installation that the condo had set up after individuals from the encampment allegedly vandalized the boiler room, leaving half of the complex without heat and reliant on space heaters. The installation was necessary, property managers said, because the space heaters kept overloading the condo’s grid.
Though Quereshi denied the condo’s request for a preliminary injunction, he did not grant the county’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which describes the encampment as a “state-created danger” and demands $100 million in damages. The allegations center on the county’s policy of delivering food to homeless encampments, including the one behind the Marylander, even as police warned that such deliveries would “incentivize the unhoused population to return.”
The county has also refused to guarantee a loan to the complex to fix the heat. And it is now attempting to place the property into receivership, a move the lawsuit suggests is intended to capitalize on rising property values generated by a nearby light rail project.
“The County’s actions have been the moving force that has decimated a deteriorating community and has expanded economic opportunities not for persons of low and moderate income, but for drug dealers, pimps, and developers,” the lawsuit reads. “Whatever remains … will be fed to developers, who will grind what survives down to the pittance they might be paid to leave.”
The Office of the Prince George’s County Executive did not respond to requests for comment.
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