Many lawyers would jump at the offer to be a partner at their law firm. But for Andrew Rabinowitz, the opportunity came at a personal cost that far outweighed the prospect of earning more money and responsibility at a firm that represented landlords trying to evict tenants.
“I expected that was going to be me, and I’d say ‘yes, thank you, thank you!’ ” said the 39-year-old Baltimore resident. “I’ve worked so hard for this. But I asked myself if this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Is this why I went to law school? I took a hard look at my life, where I came from, and it’s from two parents who were public servants.”
His father served as chief of social work at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. His mother was dean of admissions at the nursing schools at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. When the couple eventually retired, said Rabinowitz, hundreds, if not thousands, of nursing students and the families of elderly patients thanked them for what they had done for them. His mother received an honorary nursing degree.
Rabinowitz examined his personal goals and decided that after six years of siding with landlords, he would switch sides to represent tenants facing eviction.
Unsurprisingly, 96% of landlords are represented by a lawyer in eviction cases while the same is true for just 1% of renters, according to a Stout Risius Ross study of evictions in Baltimore released in 2020.
In fact, noted Rabinowitz, “Maryland has a system that encourages landlords to file for evictions, more than any other state.”
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people faced eviction, the state of Maryland became one of three states in the entire country to pass a law mandating that renters facing eviction have a right to an attorney. Grant funding for legal representation followed the law’s passage in 2021.
And that’s where Rabinowitz stepped in.
Twenty months ago, he applied for a low-level staff position at Maryland Legal Aid’s Baltimore County Office. Given his relevant background, he was promptly encouraged to apply for a position supervising a staff of 20 in the Baltimore City housing office. He accepted the management offer and, though he doesn’t have to, still handles cases.
“I spent the previous six years litigating against everyone in my office. I filed for the evictions,” he said. “Now the bulk of what we’re doing is eviction defense and eviction prevention.”
Baltimore has a high eviction rate — about 2.5 times the national average. The city has 125,000 renter households, and nearly 140,000 eviction cases are filed annually, resulting in approximately 70,000 eviction warrants.
Some 92% of tenants would avoid disruptive displacement if they had legal counsel, according to the Stout report.
“I realized there’s a housing crisis going on; there are a lot of people about to be evicted,” acknowledged Rabinowitz. “This is the first time that housing attorneys are in demand. They have greater value than they had in the past.”
Eviction bans due to COVID have long expired, and so the eviction numbers are creeping back towards pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the Maryland Judiciary and the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office.
“The filings have gone up because people haven’t been able to pay, and the landlords want these people out of their properties so they can try to re-rent them,” explained Rabinowitz. “There have been systems in place now to get these people money so that they can remain in their units. But that money appears to be running out, and the city is taking steps to find additional sources.”
Rabinowitz grew up in Ellicott City and went to Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School for his first years of elementary school. He graduated from Frostburg State University in western Maryland and Barry University School of Law in Orlando, Fla. Now he affiliates with Temple Isaiah in Columbia, where he had his bar mitzvah.
‘The really hard part of the job’
He has a strong Jewish identity that he keeps separate from his work, he said. “I try not to identify as anything when I’m at work other than an attorney who is able to help you,” he explained. “I just want my clients to recognize that I don’t have any bias, and they can feel like they’re getting good service.”
He believes that doing this type of work is a calling, and “everybody in this building has responded to that call. It’s an incredible place to be surrounded by hundreds of like-minded individuals who aren’t just worried about their paycheck.” His is half what it used to be. “They’re worried about the job they’re doing and the people they’re helping, and that’s what inspires me to come to work every day — the fellow attorneys here.”
The losses are hard, he lamented. “I regularly have to tell people they are going to be homeless, and I try to find shelters for them. That’s the really hard part of the job.”
However, the wins make it worthwhile, he concluded: “When I’m able to keep somebody in their home and able to stop a bad landlord, then those victories will carry me for months.”
