WHY WE ARE NEEDED

The District of Columbia appears to have strong protections for renters. However, these rights exist more on paper than in practice. Different forces come together to make it difficult for tenants to assert some of their most basic rights.

DC LAW HAS STRONG SAFEGUARDS FOR TENANTS

Rental housing law in Washington strongly protects tenants - or so it would seem. Tenant rights are summarized in the District of Columbia Tenant Bill of Rights, published by the D.C. Office of the Tenant Advocate.

  • Buildings with five or more units that were constructed before 1975 are subject to rent stabilization, which limits annual rent increases to the DC-region rate of inflation plus two percent.

  • When the owner of a large building decides to sell it, tenants have the first opportunity to purchase it via the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA)

  • The law includes strong protections against eviction.

  • Tenants have a right to organize a tenant association to protect their legal rights.

  • Tenants are protected against retaliation by landlords for asserting their rights.

IN PRACTICE, TENANTS GET INADEQUATE PROTECTION

Despite the strong tenant protections in DC laws, tenants often are at the mercy of large landlords. This occurs for several reasons, for example:

  • Deep-pocketed landlords can hire aggressive attorneys to deprive tenants of their rights.

  • Tenants are forced to file most complaints in the Office of Administrative Hearings, a lower-level administrative court that has been exceptionally landlord-friendly in key cases. For years, OAH has declined to enforce legal limits on annual rent increases based on a refusal to recognize the plain English meaning of the word “rent.”

  • City agencies can fail to live up to their duty to the public. For example, the Rental Accommodations Division of the DC Department of Housing and Community Development, for years knowingly accepted false rent filings from major landlords in the city. This allowed those landlords to hide the fact that they were using false filings to demand rent increases that exceed what is allowable by law.

  • The mayor has refused to respond to repeated complaints by tenants about large landlords that violate rent control law. In the past, the administration and its predecessors knowingly have ignored evidence of wrongdoing by certain large landlords, including Equity Residential.

Because some landlords aggressively take advantage of their tenants, the city government sometimes turns a blind eye to such actions, and the system supposedly designed to protect tenants’ rights can be lawed, tenants need to take extraordinary steps to defend themselves.