From procedural reforms to structural gaps: a qualitative legislative analysis of eviction laws in Maryland

Abstract

Advanced welfare states have come to consider housing displacement and eviction among their most pressing policy concerns; this is especially true since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, state governments have enacted new protections for renters with the aim of protecting rental markets from destabilisation and reducing displacement. This article provides a qualitative legislative analysis of Maryland’s eviction-related legislation passed from 2020 to 2024, using more than twenty-five legislative documents, hearing transcripts and stakeholder testimonies to conduct the analysis. In doing so, we employed racial capitalism and slow violence as analytical frameworks to explore how legislation that is technically race-neutral may recreate ongoing structural inequities, specifically for Black women and low-income renters. The analysis shows that although legislative measures in Maryland, such as HB 18 and HB 200, improve procedural protections, they fail to disrupt ongoing dynamics of racialised housing precarity. This analysis contends that procedural justice alone, without material redistribution or enforcement, does not necessarily change the racial inequalities we seek to address but instead runs the risk of reproducing them. This paper illustrates the implications of technocratic eviction laws and distinguishes the significance of differentiating between procedural reform and structural change in housing policies.