jonetta rose barras: A whole DC government debacle on Talbert Street SE
As I listened to the women — most of them African American, some single mothers, all relatively young — tell their emotion-laden stories last week at a DC Council roundtable, I kept recalling that first line of one of Langston Hughes’ most famous poems: “What happens to a dream deferred?”
What indeed?
The women and many of their neighbors living at 1262 Talbert St. SE had saved their hard-earned money for months if not years, repaired or methodically built up their credit scores, and attended hours of mandated classes. Equally important, they had believed in their government — the DC government — which promised them, through its Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP), the opportunity to achieve what is often called the American Dream: homeownership.
Then, it all changed. For some of the women, trouble began just weeks after they closed on the purchase of their new homes at the River East at Grandview Condominiums. Floors in their units began to buckle. Walls and ceilings began to crack. The pipelines for some kitchen sinks and toilets seemed to merge and overflow, producing atrocious smells that surely were hazardous to residents’ health.
Women like Davina Callahan sought help from the government — specifically, the DC Department of Housing and Community Development, operators of HPAP and the agency that provided $9 million of public money to Stanton View Development and River East at Anacostia LLC, owned by Jerry Vines and Don Lee. She and others also went to the then-Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, responsible for inspecting construction and buildings throughout the District. They filed consumer protection complaints with the Office of the Attorney General.
Talbert Street residents thought DC officials would hold the developer or incompetent building inspectors responsible for the mess that had been made of their lives, of their dreams. Instead, in August 2021, several years after their fight began, most of the condo owners were forced to evacuate their homes after structural engineers determined that many of the 46 units were uninhabitable, the conditions having become too dangerous.
“Imagine working hard to search for a home, fixing your credit, saving funds for moving expenses, feeling ecstatic and pleased with yourself because you are breaking generational cycles, to then have it all taken away from you,” Callahan told councilmembers last week during the roundtable convened by the council’s Committee of the Whole, led by Chair Phil Mendelson, and Committee on Housing, headed by at-large member Robert White. The legislators had titled the session “The River East Grandview Condominium Debacle.”
Calling what has happened on Talbert Street a “debacle” is an understatement. Moreover, it is bodacious, cheap political theater and propaganda, crafted, in my view, to distance the council from responsibility for the DC government’s monumental failure to ensure regulatory oversight, proper use of taxpayer money, and protection of residents, particularly children.
Now, nearly two years after these beleaguered homeowners were forced to relocate, albeit with rental assistance from the government, and six years after the problems on Talbert Street were initially discovered, councilmembers have convened their first — that’s right, first — roundtable on the subject. It wasn’t even a true public hearing or investigation.
Where were they in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021? Shouldn’t there have been a formal hearing when more than a dozen households with children were forced to relocate? After all, at least five news organizations wrote stories and columns during that time about the “debacle.”
Could it be that as we move into this new election season, councilmembers want to be perceived as riding to the rescue, demanding that Mayor Muriel Bowser and her minions — including Colleen Green, DHCD’s current director, and Brian Hanlon, head of the newly formed Department of Buildings — somehow guarantee that there isn’t a repeat of the disaster and that the displaced residents are made “whole”?
Whole, indeed?
“I listened to testimonies and questions in the council’s hearing on the Talbert Street debacle and sadly, I did not hear a plan to address the issues that the residents are facing,” said LaRuby May, a former councilmember who filed one of the two lawsuits against the government and other entities involved with the Talbert Street SE development.
“The hearing allowed for the public to see these are real people, real families, real hurt and real trauma without real help,” added May, a partner at the May Jung Law Firm.
“It’s very hard for me to believe this has been going on for two years and there’s been no investigation,” Ari Theresa, another attorney who represents about a dozen residents, told the council. “This project should never have been approved.
“It’s pretty clear there was at least wrongdoing,” he added.
There continues to be government negligence, incompetence and general callous disregard. DHCD Director Green offered no definitive nor satisfactory answers to questions raised during the roundtable by Mendelson, White and their colleague, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White — the only ones of the 13-member legislature who bothered to attend. Instead, Green seemed to suggest that folks ought to be grateful for what the city has done.
Typically, she noted, such cases involving construction defects “would be a private matter between the purchaser and the developer.” However, Green said because the project was financed through a loan from the city’s Housing Production Trust Fund and the owners were assisted by HPAP, coupled with the severity of the “structural issues,” the city was “motivated to go beyond its typical role in this process and provided extended rent payments to displaced households, allowing homeowners to remain current on their mortgage obligations and have time to determine their next steps.”
While DC has paid $4.3 million in rental assistance to the affected homeowners, that support will run out in June 2024. The government also has provided $209,617 in utility assistance, $125,625 in condo payments and $96,962 from the federal Homeownership Assistance Fund (HAF) administered by DHCD. “All told, the additional assistance through Fiscal Year 2024 will be close to $5 million,” Green testified.
That’s about $4 million less than the subsidy provided to the scofflaw developer.
Drew Hubbard, the former head of the mayor’s Talbert Street Task Force, told residents in April that the city was prepared to forgive their HPAP loans and provide other supports. He said the administration could not move forward without the introduction of emergency legislation. Hubbard promised at the time that the mayor would act “soon.”
Interestingly, many of the original members of the task force are no longer in the DC government. Hubbard, who had been at the DHCD, has another assignment. That, dear readers, is additional evidence of how long officials, including the council, have allowed this tragedy to fester.
At the roundtable Mendelson asked about the mayor’s time frame for sending to the council the legislative proposal that Hubbard had said was crucial. Green said it is “under review.”
He asked why rental and utility payments for some Talbert Street residents had been paid late, causing additional stress for the affected homeowners. She said, “I will make inquiries about what is happening.”
He asked why the condo association was still paying insurance on property that has no real value. Green said she is trying to move the process forward but that the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (DISB) is reviewing that issue. She added that the agency is also discussing the issue of mortgage forgiveness with the lenders — there are about eight to 10 of them — that provided loans to Talbert Street homeowners.
“I will speak with Commissioner Karima [Woods],” said Green, reporting that she had consulted with DISB recently. “They will get back to me ‘in the next couple of days.’ That’s a direct quote,” Green added.
Hanlon, who was confirmed as the new head of DOB two days before the roundtable, sought to make it seem as if everything was under control at the agency, and much improved under his brief leadership. Except Hanlon shared with councilmembers that he is an architect — not an engineer — and did not have deep expertise on some of the issues at hand. More troubling, he did not have a special inspector on staff who could fill that knowledge gap.
Part of the reason the government didn’t realize the monumental problems at the Talbert Street project when it was under construction is that the structural engineer working for the developer also served as the special inspector, noted Hanlon.
“So, the engineer was approving his own work,” Hanlon added, explaining that it was allowable under the DC regulations in effect at the time.
Raise your hand if you’re surprised by any of this.
Councilmembers made clear that they “stand ready” to assist the Bowser administration in resolving the 6-year problem on Talbert Street SE. “There are a lot of decisions that have to be made, but they have to be made with urgency,” said Robert White.
Mendelson asked Green to provide a list of proposed actions by Dec. 9, no doubt hoping that the legislature could move any necessary legislation before leaving for its holiday break.
I don’t expect much to change in the short term for the residents.
“Countless nights I am crying myself to sleep and overwhelmed with anxiety and depression,” Callahan told the council. “I have had to seek therapeutic support to manage my emotions from this situation.”
She is a living example of what Hughes pondered when exploring what happens to a dream deferred: “Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load,” he wrote. Callahan and her neighbors are straining with that weight. During the hearing, many of them struggled to hold back their tears and to remain poised.
How long, I wonder, before they explode? Who would blame them?
jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
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