Maryland Considers ‘Jared Kushner Act’ To Ban Arresting Tenants For Unpaid Rent
Jared Kushner speaks on his cellphone before a meeting between President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 25, 2018. Image by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
By Aiden Pink January 31, 2018
A bill recently introduced in the Maryland state legislature would ban judges from issuing arrest warrants for tenants being sued for less than $5,000 in unpaid rent — a proposal that its author is calling the “Jared Kushner Act.”
The Kushner Companies, the real estate firm which presidential advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner used to run and still holds a financial stake in, is the state of Maryland’s most aggressive landlord when it comes to requesting arrest warrants for tenants it is suing for unpaid rent, the Baltimore Sun reported last year.
State delegate Bilal Ali has proposed legislation that would end the practice, which has led to the jailing of 20 Kushner tenants since 2013.
“Government has always developed policies to financially protect wealthy institutions such as the Bank Bailout of 2008,” Ali told the Sun. “On the flip side, 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.”
A spokeswoman for the Kushner Companies, Christine Taylor, said that the practice was a last resort for allegedly non-paying tenants who have missed at least two court appearances.
“It is clear that this proposed bill with its proposed name is politically motivated,” she added. “For a couple of local politicians to sponsor a bill called the Jared Kushner Act when neither Kushner Companies nor Jared Kushner, when he worked at Kushner Companies, had anything to do with these issues is petty.”
Maryland’s attorney general confirmed last year that it was investigating the Kushner Companies, which has sued hundreds of current and former tenants in local courts.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
