Jared Kushner owns lots of apartments in the Baltimore area. Some infested with mice.

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Jared Kushner owns lots of apartments in the Baltimore area. Some infested with mice.

Originally published July 28, 2019 at 12:08 pm Updated July 28, 2019 at 1:03 pm

By 

Rebecca Tan

The Washington Post

In a now-viral tweetstorm on Saturday, President Donald Trump characterized Rep. Elijah Cummings’s Baltimore-based congressional district as a “rodent infested mess” where “no human” would want to live.
His criticism rang with a particular irony in Baltimore County, where the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner owns more than a dozen apartment complexes that have been cited with hundreds of code violations and, critics say, provide sub-standard housing to lower income tenants.

In an interview Saturday, Baltimore County Executive John Olszewski Jr. condemned Trump’s comments as “an attack on basic decency.”
“It is certainly ironic that the president’s own son-in-law was complicit in contributing to some of the neglect that the president purports to be so concerned about,” Olszewski, a Democrat, added.
Kushner Companies, which started operating in Maryland in 2013, has owned almost 9,000 rental units across 17 complexes, many of them in Baltimore County, the Baltimore Sun reported earlier this year.
The properties generate at least $90 million in revenue annually. Kushner stepped down as CEO of the company in 2017, when he became a senior White House advisor.

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A company spokesperson did not address questions Sunday about whether the group agreed with Trump’s characterization of the area, but wrote: “Kushner Companies is proud to own thousands of apartments in the Baltimore area.”
In 2017, Baltimore County officials revealed that apartments owned by Kushner Cos. were responsible for more than 200 code violations, all accrued in the span of the calendar year. Repairs were made only after the county threatened fines, local officials said, and even after warnings, violations on nine properties were not addressed, resulting in monetary sanctions.
In an investigation by the New York Times and Pro Publica published earlier that year, tenants of Kushner Cos. properties reported mouse infestations, mold problems and maggots. A private investigator who looked into Kusher’s property management company, Westminster Management, described them as “slumlords.”
Christine Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Kushner Cos., asserted at the time that the group was in compliance with all state and local laws. Then-Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said that was “a stretch of truth.”
“We expect all landlords to comply with the code requirements that protect the health and safety of their tenants, even if the landlord’s father-in-law is president of the United States,” added Kamenetz, who died in 2018.
Shannon Darrow, a program manager at the tenant advocacy group Fair Housing Action Center of Maryland, said Sunday that she was “appalled” by Trump’s comments about Cummings’s district, which includes about half of Baltimore City, and most of the majority black sections of Baltimore County. She added that she found Trump’s attacks ironic given the legacy of Kushner’s properties in the district.

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