A run-in with the Garrett County Community Action Committee – and the law – preceded Lisa Lowe’s Republican campaign for delegate for the Maryland General Assembly in District 1A.
On Nov. 6, 2023, after an incident at the Community Action Committee office in Oakland, Maryland, Lowe was arrested and charged with trespassing on private property and failure to obey law enforcement. Prosecutors eventually moved the case to the stet docket, which essentially leaves the charges in place without pursuing them.
Lowe, a longtime anti-drug activist, later sued the Community Action Committee and settled out of court. But her battle with the agency over the housing it assigned her inspired her campaign for the General Assembly.
“This is the reason I am running: so that other people won’t be harmed” as they seek housing, Lowe told Capital News Service in an interview.
Lowe’s arrest was part of an ongoing, years-long dispute between Lowe and the Garrett County Community Action Committee, a nonprofit that provides assistance in areas such as housing, food and transportation to individuals in need. Capital News Service discovered the incident through a review of the court records of all 235 General Assembly candidates who face a competitive primary on June 23.
Lowe was a founder of the Heroin Action Coalition of Montgomery County, now called Family Advocates Coalition to End Addiction, and a longtime in-session aide to Del. Seth Howard, R-Anne Arundel. Lowe said she moved to Garrett County in 2020 to be close to family.
But with a limited income, she struggled to find decent housing, which is why she reached out to the Community Action Committee.
Court records show Lowe was moving between motel rooms paid for by the Community Action Committee because the home the organization placed her in in August 2023 showed severe methamphetamine contamination.
In October 2023 — two months after Lowe had moved into the house and a month before her arrest — a sample was taken from her kitchen and tested for methamphetamine toxicity.
The toxicity level was 2.3 times greater than the highest maximum limit nationwide and 70 times greater than the lowest maximum limit nationwide.
Lowe wasn’t happy about that. According to court files, a police officer was called to the premises of the Community Action Committee on the morning of Nov. 6, 2023. The officer wrote that Lowe was “belligerent” and caused a “disturbance” as she complained about the services being provided to her.
Less than five hours after the initial incident, Lowe returned to the nonprofit’s offices. While there, she was arrested on charges of failing to obey a police officer and trespassing.
In a written statement to Capital News Service, Lowe said she was invited by the organization’s leadership to return. Garrett County Community Action Committee declined a request to comment and said it does not discuss client interactions.
Lowe’s lawyer claimed the Community Action Committee reported the house was cleaned and required Lowe return there in March 2024, but she promptly hired her own cleanup company to test the house; they found “significantly high” contamination levels. A contractor then found elevated methamphetamine toxicity levels in the house it had previously cleaned over four months earlier.
In the wake of those experiences, Lowe plans to make affordable housing a key issue if voters send her to Annapolis.
“Low-income residents can’t afford housing,” she said in response to a Capital News Service questionnaire. “I will promote solutions that better utilize existing financial resources – i.e. establish tiny home villages; adaptive reuse of vacant government office buildings.”
Lowe is one of five Republicans vying for the open District 1A seat in the House of Delegates. The others are Andy Adams, Edward E. Clemons Jr., Dan Duggan and Tim Thomas.
“I want to make a difference in the lives of people who do not often advocate for themselves – people who feel invisible and left out of the democratic process,” Lowe said. “I want to improve the quality of life for people who live in Garrett County by bringing home a fair share of the funding pie that we have traditionally left on the state funding table. There is no statewide fairy that allocates resources fairly – particularly to rural parts of the state – rather, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I am that squeaky wheel.”