DCRA breakup legislation to move forward for DC Council vote next year

DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said on Monday there is “broad support for the breakup” of the large and frequently criticized DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), the subject of legislation he plans to move forward next year.

Advocates for tenants at a hearing last week supported that bill, which would create a Department of Buildings, and criticized DCRA as an unwieldy agency with a history of failing to patrol housing code violations. Others said they think the new dedicated agency would better control illegal construction. 

At a morning press briefing, Mendelson acknowledged that the Bowser administration opposed the bill, which he introduced last January with 11 of the 12 other council members. But he said his conversations with residents support his view that it’s time to restructure the city’s regulatory functions given that complaints have continued despite promises of reform.

“My thoughts are we need to move forward,” he said. “This is something we’re going to work on through next year, so I don’t have a more specific schedule.”

Speaking in favor of the proposed Department of Buildings, several witnesses last Tuesday cited a particular urgency after a deadly August fire at an illegal rental in Brightwood Park, reiterating testimony from a hearing last month on DCRA’s failures in that case. Mendelson’s bill would focus the new department on regulating building construction and issuing permits, in addition to reviewing conditions at rental homes and enforcing housing codes. Meanwhile, DCRA would rebrand as the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection. 

“DCRA fails to track housing conditions complaints, fails to follow up on those complaints, and fails to track or be able to report on its enforcement activities,” said Beth Harrison, director of the Housing Law Unit at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. Groups offering similar testimony included the Children’s Law Center and several advisory neighborhood commissioners.

At the hearing, DCRA director Ernest Chrappah urged against the bill’s passage and defended his agency, which he said has made progress on improving inspections. He said the agency has also cut down on the length of time between receipt of a housing code complaint and the scheduling of an administrative hearing, reducing it from an average 133 calendar days to 66.

DCRA has long been one of the city’s most disparaged agencies, but is under increased scrutiny after the row house at 708 Kennedy St. NW went up in flames in August, killing two residents. A subsequent audit found that DCRA failed to keep a case file on the house and did not follow up on complaints. 

Chrappah said splitting his agency “will demoralize our staff” and interrupt workflow among divisions at DCRA, requiring existing administrative offices to be duplicated at the new agency.  “Opportunities for streamlining will be reduced,” he said. 

Mendelson, who chaired the hearing, told Chrappah he did not share his positive outlook on DCRA. Mendelson said the department needs to conduct more proactive inspections of housing units, instead of just typically responding to complaints from residents.

“All of this is to rebut the statement that things are going so well that we don’t need this bill,” Mendelson told the director.

Chrappah said he came into the job in November 2018 with a “bold plan to transform the agency” by 2020. At the time, the DC auditor had just criticized DCRA for slow enforcement of housing code violations at a 100-year-old apartment complex in Brookland that included lead paint and mold.

Jamie Barden, an advisory neighborhood commissioner representing the area where the Kennedy Street fire happened, testified that he has seen “little change on the ground” at DCRA.

Barden also said that complaints from August about a suspected illegal rental home on Illinois Avenue NW were not addressed quickly enough. In response to Mendelson’s questions about the case, Chrappah said that after an initial file on the house was opened but closed without action, a second investigation resulted in fining the property owner $4,100 for multiple housing code violations.

Representatives of the construction and development industries have generally opposed the proposal to split DCRA, which was the subject of an April 2018 hearing on similar legislation Mendelson had introduced that year. 

Eric Jones, a government affairs official at the Associated Builders and Contractors of Metro Washington, suggested instead creating an ombudsman position who would track complaints of illegal construction, a frequent complaint at both hearings.

“The council needs to directly address the agency’s core performance issues as part of any reform,” said Lisa Mallory, CEO of the District of Columbia Building Industry Association. “Instead of reorganizing the agency in hopes it will yield improvement, we think there are initiatives that the council and DCRA can undertake now.”

Mallory said DCRA could begin by recruiting and retaining top talent.

Mendelson countered that the agency may need to start fresh. “Maybe just the act of creating a new agency — kind of blowing up the existing one — would provide an opportunity to change the culture,” he said.

Chuck Elkins, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 3, testified that the proposed restructuring doesn’t go far enough. He said the city needs a new department focused solely on protecting tenants from unsafe conditions, a narrower focus than the proposed Department of Buildings. Elkins, who cited his work on the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, also stressed the importance of ensuring widespread compliance, not just reactive enforcement.

“Reorganizations per se do not change culture,” he said. “To change the culture, this bill needs to carve out the rental housing program. Then the bill needs to hand the leadership of this new agency over to lawyers with enforcement [and] compliance experience.”

Although Elkins recommended that the council split the current DCRA into three agencies along with developing policy guidance, he said that — if he were forced to choose — he would separate the rental housing functions and leave enforcement against illegal construction as part of the existing agency.