Van Ness South Tenants Association president Harry Gural testified before the DC Council on Tuesday about chronically broken exterior doors at 3003 Van Ness. The testimony was part of a DC Council hearing on the SAFE Act, legislation developed by Attorney General Brian Schwalb designed to help increase building security in DC apartment buildings.

In his testimony, Gural told DC Councilmembers that calls by residents of 3003 Van Ness to 911 for help from the police have skyrocketed in recent months, with one or two calls per day. Other apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue have experienced similar increases in recent years, with calls from five to ten times higher than a few years ago.

Reading from actual 911 call data retrieved from the DC Office of Unified Communications, Gural said that in October 2024 alone, residents of 3003 Van Ness had called the police for a stabbing, assaults, theft, burglary, disorderly disturbance, domestic violence, and other incidents. In addition, in prior months, records show calls to the police for sexuall assault, aggravated assault, illegal firearms, drug dealing, overdoses, harrassment, stolen vehicles, and suspicious persons.

Gural’s written testimony including 31 pages of 911 calls, thumbnails of dozens of YouTube videos, as well as a March 2022 report by the tenant association, “Security Failures at 3003 Van Ness.”

Gural reported to Councilmembers that at the same time that there were these clear signs of high levels of criminal activity at 3003 Van Ness, building security remained extraoldinarily lax, with several exterior doors being broken at almost all times, allowing easy access to the building to non-residents. Even on the day of the hearing, video shows that there were four broken security doors at 3003 Van Ness.

Gural testified that he and other members of the tenant association had been recording video of these broken doors for more than two and a half years and have posted more than 80 such videos on the Van Ness South Tenants Association YouTube channel.

Dozens of other housing advocates joined Gural in supporting Attorney General’s Schalb’s SAFE Act, which is designed to put pressure on owners and managers of rental housing properties that do not take adequate steps to secure their buildings.

The SAFE Act will be reintroduced in January and will likely be voted on in the winter or spring.

Read Gural’s testimony, 911 data and other supporting documents

The tenant association encourages members who have an opinion about security at 3003 Van Ness or about the SAFE Act to add a comment below.