COMMON AREAS

There are some very nice common areas at 3003 Van Ness — e.g., the large outdoor pool (which is owned and operated by the co-op building to our north), the upper and lower courtyards, the fitness room, etc.

However, in recent years there have been chronic problems in some common areas. For example, there have been massive leaks in the underground garages, extensive flooding on every floor of the West building, elevators that are inoperable for weeks or months at a time, lighting in hallways and stairwells that doesn’t work, chronically broken exterior security doors and doors in the garages, frequent heat and hot water outages, and other chronic problems.

WHAT THE TENANT ASSOCIATION HAS DONE

The tenant association is well aware of these chronic issues and has aggressively pushed Equity Residential to repair the problems. We have written reports about poor maintenance and security, recorded almost 100 videos of broken security doors, testified before the DC Council, and worked with DC Councilmembers, the DC Attorney General, the DC Department of Buildings, and the DC Office of the Tenant Advocate.


WHAT YOU CAN DO

Residents need to work together to get things fixed.

  1. Take photos and especially videos of problems. It is not enough to simply tell management or city authorities that a problem exists - you must collect evidence. See examples of videos taken by residents. Send your videos and photos to the tenant association at vnsta@vnsta.org.

  2. Tell management in writing via email about these problems. Send the photos or video as evidence. Copy the tenant association. Maintain a paper trail of all correspondence about this issue.

  3. If building management fails to address the issue in a reasonable time period, work with the tenant association to report the problem to the Department of Buildings, which will conduct and inspection and levy fines if necessary.

See the example of effective video below. This makes a strong point about the broken exterior doors because it shows how easy it is to get into the building.