jonetta rose barras: The DCRA indictment

The recent report from DC auditor Kathy Patterson and her team has revealed numerous weaknesses within the inspection and enforcement regime at the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA). It has also served as an indictment of the leadership of that agency’s director, Melinda Bolling, underscoring my previous call in this space for her termination.

Using one apartment complex as a case study — Dahlgreen Courts in the Brookland neighborhood in Ward 5 — the auditor found that the agency offered “excessive leniency to landlords” and that DCRA leadership seemed disinclined to institute a more rigorous enforcement, despite having the discretion to do so.

“Failure to enforce the housing code effectively and consistently jeopardizes the health and well-being of the most vulnerable residents in the District,” Patterson said in a prepared statement at the time of the audit’s release earlier this week. “It also contributes to the loss of affordable housing when bad conditions persist and deteriorate. Tenants who have the resources can go elsewhere and those who don’t are forced to live in substandard conditions.”

Bolling challenged the report, including the title of the document, its methodology, its findings and its recommendations. She asserted in her response to the auditor that DCRA “absolutely cares about making sure residential properties and publicly supported or subsidized housing for low-income residents are safe, up to code, that landlords are responsive to repair and code issues and that DCRA is quick to inspect to ensure units are suitable for our residents.”

Hogwash. Just ask the many tenants around the city who have interacted with the DCRA, including those at Ward 4’s Rittenhouse Apartments, where I live. Renters have told me about the agency’s failure to reinspect their units after the initial visit and citation of housing code violations. They have said that DCRA often threatens to fine property owners but frequently does not levy those fines, providing extensions and forcing tenants to live in substandard environments. And, in far too many cases, DCRA has taken months before moving to take legal action against landlords who, even after extensions, do not fully correct the code violations.

After suffering for years with poor housing conditions, tenants at Dahlgreen Courts decided in 2010 to exercise their rights through the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, when their building went on the market. They chose the nonprofit Mission First Housing Development Corp. as their partner, assigning their ownership rights to that organization. Mission First borrowed as much as $5.1 million in community block grant funds from the DC government. It also received a tax-exempt bond for $6.2 million, according to the audit report. That’s $11.3 million from taxpayers, which should have prompted DCRA and other government agencies to more closely track the renovation at the complex and its subsequent management and maintenance.

Dahlgreen residents expected high-quality renovations. That’s not what they said they received. Over the past several years, they have complained vehemently to the DCRA and the DC Council. This year, they filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Mission First.

That sounds like the continuing narrative of tenants in this city. Consider the similar situation that faced residents of the Ward 8 apartment complex in Congress Heights I wrote about in a prior column. In that case, as with Dahlgreen Courts, DCRA lollygagged while tenants suffered.

Mission First owns as many as 1,066 units in 10 properties in the District — all supported financially by the local government, either through loans or vouchers, according to the auditor. What are the housing conditions at those apartment complexes?

At Dahlgreen, Patterson and her staff found that DCRA inspectors issued “24 notices for 105 violations in 17 units and two common areas, with potential fines of $36,300.” Don’t think for a minute that is what the owner paid, however, for breaking the law. Instead, DCRA took nearly eight months to actually impose any fines, and then “the landlord paid a fine of $2,500 for violations in six units,” according to the audit.  

“The housing inspections program does not differentiate enforcement practices of properties that house vulnerable populations, owners with a poor track record, and owners who receive or received financial support from the District government or other public sources for the building or property subject to the complaint,” auditors wrote.

Patterson recommended that the city council — whose chairman, Phil Mendelson, requested the audit — should move to shorten the time between inspections and reinspections, increase fines and other penalties, and improve transparency and accountability.

Bolling and her agency have admitted that the owner of Dahlgreen Courts has been a problem landlord, according to auditors. Still, they have not moved aggressively to use the tools in the agency’s arsenal to protect residents. Among other things, the DCRA could have pulled Mission First’s license to do business in the city. The government could have called in the loan; it could have filed its own lawsuit.

The fixation for Bolling apparently is mayoral and agency prerogatives. While agreeing that “inspections and re-inspections can be more efficient,” she argued that any changes should be left to her and Mayor Muriel Bowser. “Reforms are in process and most of the matters discussed are quintessential executive branch functions,” Bolling wrote in her response to the audit.

She said: “The executive and her designee, the director of DCRA, must continue to have discretion to extend times for repairs given various levels of complexity for building repairs and time frames for ordering parts, finding contractors, gaining access to units, etc.”

Who does it sound like Bolling is more interested in protecting and representing — tenants, the mayor, or government functionaries like herself?

jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.