Karen Hernandez has been in worse health since October.

The Ward 1 resident and mother of three has multiple conditions that require medical care. Until recently, she says she was receiving injections every six months to help with her chronic back pain, while undergoing physical therapy in preparation for surgery on her arm. That all used to be free for Hernandez through the DC Health Care Alliance, a locally funded insurance program for low-income immigrants who don’t qualify for Medicaid or Medicare.

But it all changed on Oct. 1, when the Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF) reduced Alliance members’ benefits and made it more difficult to access many forms of care. That’s in addition to implementing tighter income requirements as part of a plan to end adult enrollment on that insurance program by October 2027 — a proposal that would leave the vast majority of around 19,000 beneficiaries like Hernandez with few, if any, affordable health insurance options.

Alliance no longer covers physical therapy for adults, while injections and surgical procedures require a doctor to call for a “prior authorization,” according to the most recent member handbook. When Hernandez went to her appointments after the change, however, she says she was told her insurance no longer covers any of these services, and that another injection alone would cost her $7,000 out-of-pocket — several times the amount that her household earns in a typical month.

It all means living with more pain. 

“If I walk, I feel a cramp. I feel hurt,” Hernandez told The 51st. “Sometimes I can’t walk, because it hurts.” In total, the changes mean that over 40,000 low-income D.C. residents like Hernandez have lost some of their benefits or lost their coverage entirely, according to estimates from DHCF and D.C.’s Health Benefit Exchange Authority.

At a breakfast meeting with D.C. Council members last month, Mayor Muriel Bowser characterized the recent cuts to healthcare spending as a way to address rising costs during dire financial times. She presented even bigger potential reductions — including dropping the Alliance income limit to just 24% of the federal poverty level on Oct. 1 of this year, completely eliminating adult enrollment on Alliance next year, and canceling Medicaid coverage for around 93,000 childless adults in fiscal year 2029 — as a difficult but necessary money-saving strategy as the District seeks to close a funding gap of $1.1 billion going into the next fiscal year.

“These changes are going to make these programs more sustainable for more people, for a longer period of time,” said Bowser, who declined to comment on any follow-up questions about her statements or her budget proposal until after it is introduced (it is expected in early April).

DHCF estimates that healthcare rollbacks will save about $189 million in fiscal year 2026 and $233 million in fiscal year 2027. Most of this year’s savings — about $109 million — is from Alliance changes, while $80 million comes from DHCF reducing the income limit for Medicaid.

Patients, healthcare workers, and service coordinators, however, described a heavy human toll, with some patients enduring worse health outcomes because they’re missing medicines and treatments that their insurance no longer covers. They say others are passing up work opportunities in order to meet stricter income limits, getting teeth pulled that they could have saved if they had dental insurance, or facing greater challenges finding transportation to crucial medical appointments.

Another major blow to D.C.’s healthcare programs came on Jan. 1, when DHCF cut Medicaid coverage for about 17,000 people. Most of these beneficiaries transferred to a new program, Healthy DC (also known as the Basic Health Plan), which lacks benefits like dental and vision insurance. Unlike Medicaid, this program is fully federally funded. 

While the transition went smoothly from an operations perspective, many beneficiaries didn’t realize their plans had changed — leaving some care centers overwhelmed with patients who didn’t know how to access their new health plan. 

Despite extensive outreach efforts both before and after the change, Mila Kofman, executive director of D.C.’s Health Benefit Exchange Authority, said she believes many people still don’t know they lost Medicaid coverage and probably won’t learn about it until the next time they try to get care. 

In some cases, the consequences of this confusion might be relatively minor, just requiring a care provider to call an insurance company to get a patient’s new ID number. But other instances may be more serious. For example, Kofman said she has had limited success in contacting about 2,200 residents who lost Medicaid and don’t qualify for Healthy DC — meaning they’ll have to begin paying monthly premiums through D.C.’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.

“All of our tried and proven communications and outreach strategies that have worked well for other populations that we serve, they don’t work for this population,” Kofman told The 51st.

Hernandez, an Alliance member for over two decades, wants local leaders to recognize the impact of their decisions.

“We really need their help,” Hernandez said. “Not only for my family — I am asking for everybody, equally, because we need the insurance for our health.”

At the ER after losing health insurance 

Gabby Salado, a student services coordinator at Briya Public Charter School, has witnessed the impacts of cuts on low-income immigrants firsthand.

She recalled one instance where a student in her adult education classes didn’t show up to class for a few days and then missed an appointment to help him navigate social services. Salado gave him a call, and learned that he hadn’t been coming because his face was swollen and his teeth were causing him too much pain.

“The obvious question was, like, ‘Well, have you gone to the doctor?’” Salado recalled. “His answer was simply, ‘No. I have no money. This is too expensive for me.”

The Ward 1 resident ended up in the emergency room that night, Salado said. He and his wife texted her from the hospital with questions about how to navigate billing.

Salado says he’s a former Alliance member, among the roughly 8,600 people who have lost their coverage since DHCF lowered the program’s income limit in October — a steep drop from 27,600 to 19,000 beneficiaries as of the first quarter of this year. Deputy Mayor for D.C. Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage has attributed the decline to tighter eligibility requirements, a moratorium on new enrollments, and also a fear of immigration enforcement.

Because of their immigration status, the overwhelming majority of these former beneficiaries aren’t eligible for any other publicly funded healthcare programs. Among roughly 2,200 people who lost coverage at the end of September, for instance, only 55 were identified as potentially eligible for Healthy DC or a Qualified Health Plan. 

Before October, Salado said her office often helped students apply to Alliance, but the program now no longer accepts most new enrollees over age 25. Instead, a more stringent income cap at 138% of the federal poverty level — about $22,000 per year, for a one-person household — has brought painful decisions to many families still on Alliance.

“A lot of the families were like, ‘We barely make enough to pay rent, but now they’re saying that we make too much for healthcare,’” Salado said.

Some beneficiaries now must walk a careful line, earning enough money to provide for their families, but not making so much that they lose their healthcare. 

“They pass up the bit of extra income that they could get, out of fear to lose their benefits,” she said.

People who lost Alliance coverage — such as Salado’s student who ended up in the ER — find themselves in an even more precarious position. For instance, Hernandez’s husband, who is the sole breadwinner for their household of four, has been left paying $435 every few months to cover his blood pressure medicine, and can no longer afford another medication that he takes for his diabetes, which would cost $1,000 for a refill, Hernandez said.

Some former beneficiaries have been finding help at federally qualified health centers like Mary's Center and La Clínica del Pueblo, which offer care on a sliding pay scale and are obligated to help people regardless of their insurance status. Even so, tight finances and limited awareness about available options have left many families weighing the cost of taking care of their health against other needs like paying rent and buying food.

“If the medicine is cheap, [families] cover it. If the medicine is expensive, they don’t,” Hernandez said.

Medicaid changes create barriers to care

When around 17,000 D.C. residents lost Medicaid coverage in January, it triggered weeks of confusion for some of D.C.’s most vulnerable patients.

Faith, a social worker at a D.C. cancer center who asked to go by her middle name because she isn’t authorized to speak to the media, said the change brought immediate chaos to her workplace as patients began showing up with Medicaid cards that no longer worked. When administrators checked these patients’ insurance status, they were all listed as uninsured.

“It was just, like, two full weeks of total pandemonium, and we received basically no guidance from the D.C. government ahead of time about how to navigate these changes in coverage,” said Faith, who has since left that facility to work for a different cancer center in Virginia.

The Health Benefit Exchange had mailed new member ID cards and multiple notices to all 15,000 people who were automatically added to Healthy DC, and had coordinated with groups like the DC Medical Society and DC Hospital Association on informing physicians. However, Kofman said that information about how to access new ID numbers may not have reached office managers or front office staff, and that many beneficiaries didn't realize the significance of the mail they received.

Additionally, Kofman said her team has been successful in contacting only about 300 of the 2,200 people who lost Medicaid and are ineligible for Healthy DC, despite multiple rounds of calls, texts, emails, and notices.

“You make things seamless, and run the risk that some patients will not know that things have changed,” Kofman said.

While Faith’s team eventually sorted out the logistics, complications have continued for patients who used to rely on Medicaid to get rides to appointments. Healthy DC doesn’t cover non-emergency transportation, presenting a problem for patients who don’t have a car, can’t afford a rideshare and, in some cases, are too sick or immunocompromised to take transit.

Gwen Umbach, a paralegal at another D.C. healthcare facility, described one instance of a patient calling the fire department for help because ice and snow prevented her from getting to a bus stop. In the past, Medicaid would have covered a ride directly from her doorstep.

Some patients with disabilities are still able to get rides through the MetroAccess Paratransit program for a couple dollars. Even so, Umbach said the cost and the extra effort create new barriers.

“I have one patient who has rescheduled a meeting with me three or four times now, because she doesn’t have a friend or family member available who can drive her … and she doesn’t have the money for any other option,” she said.

DHCF did not respond to questions about how many Medicaid members use non-emergency transportation each year, or how much it would cost to restore Healthy DC members’ access to this benefit.

More issues may be coming down the pipe for Healthy DC beneficiaries because the program also doesn’t cover vision or dental insurance. Dr. Steven Myles, the senior dentist at Bread for the City, has already been witnessing health impacts on members of Alliance since that program stopped covering dental in October.

While Bread for the City provides patients with full-service care whether they have insurance or not, the health center sometimes has to refer patients to specialists for more complicated procedures. But that’s not a viable option for low-income people without dental insurance, who may end up having to choose between living with pain and losing a tooth.

“We’re seeing a lot more extractions, or people just losing their teeth when they could have saved their teeth,” Myles said.

In addition to patients losing their dental insurance, Myles noted that fear from the increase in deportations may be making some people afraid to seek care.

Budget fights begin

Major decisions about the future of D.C.’s healthcare programs are at stake during this year’s budget season — and storm clouds are already gathering. While several councilmembers have joined a push to restore benefits to Alliance and Healthy DC members, Bowser has expressed commitment to keeping current reductions in place and moving forward with plans to end adult enrollment on Alliance by October 2027.

One pressure point concerns $21 million that the D.C. Council approved to restore current Alliance members’ benefits. While CFO Glen Lee greenlit DHCF to spend this funding in December, the agency hasn’t done so yet.

Bowser voiced concerns at the February breakfast meeting about “whiplash” if Alliance members see benefits temporarily restored, but then taken away again this October, when DHCF is on track to reduce the program’s income limit once again.

“We made some very well informed, difficult decisions last year around this, and they’re turning out pretty well in terms of how these programs are operating, so I would invite you to stick with them,” Bowser said. 

Her stance prompted criticism from policymakers including Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker, who noted that the $21 million is in the budget that the D.C. Council approved and that has been signed into law.

It remains unclear when, if ever, Bowser and the Council will reach an agreement on how to spend the money. Neither DHCF nor At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson, chair of the Council's Committee on Health, responded to inquiries.

In the meantime, four councilmembers have signed a letter urging Bowser to restore funding for various social programs in this year’s budget proposal — returning Alliance to previous eligibility levels and adding benefits including dental and vision coverage for Healthy DC members, among other changes.

“The safety net is at risk of being dismantled and in desperate need of corrective action,” wrote Henderson, Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau, Ward 4’s Janeese Lewis George and Ward 6’s Charles Allen.

Bowser, by contrast, pointed to healthcare costs that are rising faster than inflation and $700 million less available revenue projected in the coming fiscal year. In financial times like these, she argued, some forms of support for D.C.’s most vulnerable residents are just too expensive.

“I believe that the current changes put us on a more sustainable path, and that’s likely what I would advance again,” Bowser said.

It has been a little more than a year since Leilany Raya testified about the “unspeakable living conditions” in her Columbia Heights building. 

In March 2025, Raya told the Committee on Housing, chaired by At-Large Councilmember Robert White, about the “ongoing mistreatment” of tenants, many of whom were children and seniors, after Ernst Equities purchased the building in 2023.

“Since Ernst Equities acquired our building, we have faced continuous violations of our basic tenants rights,” Raya told elected officials. “The developer’s actions, coupled with the District’s lack of enforcement, have left us in unsafe, unhealthy, and completely intolerable living conditions.”

Many of the units had gone without heat for a week the previous winter, Raya said, and severe leaks, mold, rodent infestations, and an unsecured entrance remained unaddressed despite several requests for urgent repairs. Raya said Ernst Equities continually offered tenants buyouts to leave.

“Why don’t you use that money to actually repair our units? Why are you still buying properties when you don’t have the funds to actually repair our building?” she said.

White, along with reps from multiple government agencies, went to visit the building following the hearing. But Raya says in a recent interview with City Paper that nothing has changed.

By July 2025, the property had accumulated 125 housing code violations, totaling $132,273 in fines, and Raya is now in court battling an eviction case she claims was filed in retaliation for her refusal to take a buyout. As part of the case, Raya now pays $600 a month into the court registry—less than half of the full monthly rent of $1,269; a judge reduced the rate due to the condition of her apartment, she says.

Raya’s experience is a consequence of a calculated business strategy outlined by Ernst Equities’ founder, Felipe Ernst, for transforming unprofitable rent-controlled buildings into cash cows.

Ernst explained his strategy on a 2020 episode of a business podcast: “We’ll be filling up those units with voucher tenants, and then we’re making now a lot more money off the rent,” he said, adding, “The rent comes 100 percent from the government, so, you know, it’s locked in. … There’s not a lot of risk.”

The key to generating profits, Ernst said, was targeting tenants with housing vouchers who could pay up to $1,000 above market-rate rents.

“If you have a market tenant and you have a voucher tenant, and the rates are the same, nine out of 10 times you’re probably gonna go with the market tenant, because you’re like, oh, he has a job, and like, he’s probably not gonna mess shit up,” Ernst said.

Getting the existing tenants out was simple, Ernst explained. “These people, a lot of them, are low-income, minorities, and they’ve never seen, you know, a check for over $5,000,” he said.

But the true “secret sauce” to permanently increasing profits are voluntary agreements. The deals, under Ernst’s strategy, include relatively modest buyouts for tenants, and in exchange they agree to vacate their homes and to permit Ernst to increase the rent-controlled rate more than the law would otherwise allow. In January 2025, the D.C. Council reauthorized the use of voluntary agreements after a three-year moratorium, adding new procedures meant to act as guardrails on large increases. Voluntary agreements are one of the ways landlords in D.C. can legally increase rents beyond the incremental increases allowed by law.

The strategy, in essence, allows developers to extract large, low-risk profits from public funds, which in turn fuel the acquisition of more buildings. Ernst owned three units in Shaw in 2015. He’s since expanded his portfolio to more than 2,300 rental units in the D.C. area, according to his bio for Georgetown University, where he is an adjunct lecturer. 

Ernst is not alone in implementing this strategy. While the District grapples with an affordability crisis and about 17,000 households on the waitlist for housing vouchers, some developers—with the support of lenders and property managers—are exploiting the voucher program to convert affordable rent-controlled properties into lucrative, voucher-only buildings, according to court filings, public records, targeted rental inquiries, and tenant interviews.

Kate Scott, executive director of the nonprofit Equal Rights Center, says the strategy fundamentally undermines the housing voucher program’s original intent.

“The concept that drove the development of the Housing Choice Voucher program to begin with was that it would promote integration,” she says. “So if you are developing buildings or groups of buildings that are only voucher holders, then it’s really contrary to the purpose of the voucher program.”

The displacement push

In March 2025, Jasmine Joyner, White’s constituent services coordinator, sent an email to multiple D.C. agencies outlining “several critical issues affecting the residents’ quality of life and safety” at Raya’s building on Clifton Street NW. 

The list included serious fire safety hazards, excessive mold growth, a “rampant rodent infestation,” and a lack of heat that left residents, including seniors, in “intolerable conditions” for two months.

Joyner wrote the email after White’s staff and reps from various government agencies visited the property to observe the conditions. Management neglect resulted in accumulated trash and a broken front door, according to Joyner. City Paper observed similar conditions on a recent visit nearly a year later.

“Our goal is to address these matters promptly and ensure accountability from Ernst Equities, the property management company,” Joyner wrote.

A month after Joyner’s email, Raya says tenants received notice that Blue Jay Property Management was taking over as the building’s property manager. But after a little digging, Raya was dismayed to learn that Ernst was still behind the company. He announced in a social media post that he rebranded Ernst Equities into Blue Jay Property Management and Capitol Rock as the private equity investment arm.

These days, Raya says she believes all of her new neighbors have housing vouchers. But while taxpayers are paying Ernst luxury-apartment-level rates, his tenants continue to live in hazardous unsanitary conditions, she says. 

A three-bedroom apartment in the building, currently advertised for $4,250, was registered with DHCD with a rent-controlled rate of $1,101 in 2023.

Amelia moved into the Clifton Street NW building in January 2024 after leaving a homeless shelter with her three young children. Her voucher pays $3,400 for a converted two-bedroom unit. The city-wide DCHA average for a unit that size is $2,343. Amelia says the unit is “more like a one and a half” bedrooms.

DCHA policy, outlined in documents provided to the D.C. Council, requires inspectors to verify that any converted bedroom meets HUD and D.C. standards—minimum square footage, a closet, a window, and both primary and secondary egress. The policy is designed to prevent owners from inflating rents by adding noncompliant partition walls to claim higher-bedroom units.

Amelia says a ceiling fixture fell shortly after she moved in, flooding her entire kitchen. She has contended with severe and ongoing maintenance issues, including mold, fungus growing out of the floor, a lack of heat, and a burnt electrical wire behind the stove that an electrician said could be a fire hazard. The property management portal says the electrical wire repair was “COMPLETED,” but Amelia says that’s not true.

“This is not just one thing wrong, like, this is everything,” Amelia says. “Even when they came to supposedly fix my apartment, they did a half-assed job.” She says she reported a broken soap dish in the bathtub to the property manager multiple times, but it has gone unaddressed. A few weeks ago, Amelia’s 3-year-old daughter fell in the tub and was injured by a jagged edge of the porcelain; the toddler cut her back and required nine stitches, Amelia says.

She thought things would improve after White’s office visited her unit last year. “They just came and they looked and they showed interest, but nothing ever was done,” she says. “I’ve called the DOB four times now. They’ve come out twice, but it still hasn’t made a difference. I’m so stuck here.”

Amelia says she has tried to get help from a revolving cast of caseworkers. But inevitably, she says she is told that if she doesn’t like her unit, she can go back to a shelter.

Ernst defends his company’s handling of the property, saying they bought the building out of foreclosure and it had a lot of deferred maintenance.

“The building was in really poor condition,” he says. “And we’ve tried to invest in it as much as we can, and we have spent a considerable amount of money on the property.”

Ernst denies that his strategy is to push out rent-controlled tenants, saying he wants to “lease to the open market and to try and provide housing that everyone can be proud of.” He attributed the high advertised rents to Morningstar, which he says  took over property management in October.

“Everything that’s happened since then has been outside of our purview, our direction, and our control,” Ernst says. 

Mazen Zaatari, managing partner of Morningstar Community Development, which is part of the ownership group of the Clifton Street property, clarifies that his company Earning Housing Management is responsible for operating the property. He tells City Paper the partners voted to remove Ernst’s company, Blue Jay, from managing the Clifton Street property, due in part to the housing code violations, in addition to management of two other properties.

Zaatari insists that the advertised rent of $4,240 is an error, and says his company has spent $130,000 on maintenance and repair backlogs to turn things around since taking over in November. And if repairs were halted after tenants refused buyouts, that was “not on our watch,” he says. “I will assure you that I’ve never and will never force anyone out of their unit.”

Zaatari shared contracts for trash pickup, cleaning services, and pest control, but City Paper observed piled up trash and dead roaches at the Clifton Street property as recently as early March. 

Reasonable rent?

Between 2020 and 2023, while Ernst was building his rental portfolio, the D.C. Housing Authority, which administers the housing voucher program, overpaid for 1,339 apartments, according to the agency’s own rent study, totaling $17.2 million in payments above standard market rate.

DCHA instituted a rent reasonableness review to prevent voucher overpayments in July 2023, a process that landlords tried to manipulate to secure higher rents, according to City Paper’s analysis.

Susie McClannahan, fair housing director at the Equal Rights Center, questions the ongoing lack of transparency from DCHA. 

“Rent reasonableness determinations seem to be exceedingly arbitrary and nobody in the city really seems to know how DCHA is making these determinations, or how the tool that it’s using is coming up with these calculations,” McClannahan says.

City Paper’s review of data retrieved via the Freedom of Information Act on approximately 80 records of approved rents in Raya’s zip code shows DCHA paid an average of $3,950 for three-bedroom, one-bath units in 2024.

Many of Ernst’s properties, such as those in Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights, are located in high-opportunity neighborhoods that enable upward economic mobility for low-income residents. These neighborhoods tend to have higher median incomes, more college-educated residents, and lower incarceration rates. When vouchers are paired with support, studies show, low-income families are much more likely to relocate to these areas.

But the research only looks at neighborhoods as a whole—it doesn’t track what happens when developers create new, highly clustered enclaves of poverty even within high-opportunity neighborhoods.

Even as his business strategy favors concentration of tenants with vouchers, Ernst acknowledged in the podcast interview the importance of creating mixed income buildings: “You have market rate tenants, you have voucher rate tenants, which, in my opinion, is the catalyst for a successful city, as opposed to having, like, isolated poverty.”

‘Two-bedroom with a pantry’

Similar practices that displace tenants are evident at other properties undergoing ownership change, including a complex with nearly 60 units near the intersection of Alabama Avenue and 22nd Street SE in Congress Heights. The distressed property went into receivership after the OAG sued the former owner for life-threatening housing conditions and was sold in bankruptcy in December 2023.

The new owner, Antawan Williams, planned to fully renovate the neglected properties, but tenants say they were shut out from the benefits of renovations. Tenant Joyce Jolly sued Williams in May 2024, accusing him of refusing to make repairs and of “saying the property is uninhabitable to encourage the tenant to move out,” according to the lawsuit.

Water service was periodically shut off and the landlord—an LLC controlled by Williams—had stopped mail and garbage service, Jolly alleged. Her complaint detailed a broken furnace, holes in the floors, a mice infestation, and the smell of mold permeating the building. In the motion for a temporary restraining order, Jolly asked to be moved to a renovated unit during repairs.

Jolly ultimately signed a settlement agreement, agreeing to vacate in exchange for $26,500. The payment was to be made in two installments: $14,000 within three days of signing the agreement and $12,500 within three days of moving out. But Jolly later had to return to court to enforce the agreement after Williams’ LLC failed to make the second payment. The landlord claimed Jolly moved out one day late and violated the agreement; a judge found that argument unpersuasive,

The newly renovated units were advertised by Hart Communities Foundation in 2025, including in a video posted to Instagram aimed specifically at people with housing vouchers. “If you have DCHA, DHS, Career MAP, Rapid Rehousing you are welcome to come with all your paperwork, copy of ID, social, birth certificate, income statement, and updated voucher,” a Hart Communities employee said in the video. “If you don’t have an income statement … or income let us know. We have zero income forms available for you. Come meet us there. You have an opportunity to get some brand new units. Let’s go!”

In a phone call, Williams says that when he purchased the property, the previous owner had already hired someone to relocate the tenants. He says only eight or nine people lived at the property, and four were “squatters.”

Williams denies working with Hart Communities and says his company “accept[s] all tenants.”

“I’m a businessman. I follow the law. I know the laws of D.C. government, so therefore I don’t force any tenant out,” he says.

Williams repeatedly refused to say whether the property was rent-controlled, only stating, “I’m a great landlord, and the D.C. government loves me as a landlord. …We accept any tenant, whether or not they have a market rent, voucher, or whatever.”

Hart Communities did not respond to calls from City Paper. 

By the fall of 2025, three of the buildings had certificates of occupancy, according to court filings from Williams’ LLC, and were filled, in part, by tenants with housing vouchers. But by December, a lawyer for Williams’ LLC said in court documents that the goal of “filling up the units with voucher holders,”  had been hampered by market conditions.

But DOB records show that none of the buildings in the Alabama Avenue SE complex have current certificates of occupancy, meaning tenants cannot legally live there. And a 2024 inspection for one of the buildings, 2429 Alabama Ave. SE, was disapproved, citing basement storage rooms converted into units without approved plans or permits; unauthorized plumbing, electrical, and mechanical work; and multiple fire and safety compliance issues.

Units in the Congress Heights complex are now advertised by a new entity, DaDukes Developments. The company lists a renovated three-bedroom unit at the complex for $2,498, calling it “a steal of a deal.” 

One tenant who currently lives in a three-bedroom unit describes it as a “two-bedroom with a pantry.”

The suits file in

Practices that exclude low- and moderate-income renters without vouchers from affordable units have prompted intervention from the D.C. Office of the Attorney General.

Last January, the OAG sued Petra Management Group, alleging that the company exploited a rent-control loophole that allowed Petra to charge higher, subsidy-backed rents instead of the lower rent-controlled rates.

The District’s Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on a person’s source of income. The law is meant to protect voucher holders from discrimination, which remains rampant. But it can also apply to the exclusion of tenants without vouchers.

The OAG alleged that Petra engaged in this type of exclusion at three complexes with more than 100 units—the Adams, the Madison, and the Keystone. Petra allegedly leased only to tenants with vouchers and misled prospective tenants by advertising apartments at inflated, voucher-based rates.

In October 2025, Petra entered into a settlement with D.C., agreeing to pay $700,000 in penalties, advertise all available rent-controlled apartments at lawful rates, end discriminatory leasing and advertising practices, provide fair housing training to staff, and undergo three years of compliance monitoring.

More recently, the OAG has pursued lenders who financed or appraised properties planned to house only tenants with vouchers.

In February, the OAG sued Red Oak Capital Holdings, alleging its lending and appraisal practices discriminate based on a tenant’s source of income, violating the District’s Human Rights Act. According to the OAG, the real estate lender structured loans and appraisals for more than 300 rent-controlled units with the expectation that developers would rent primarily to voucher holders for higher subsidized rents. This strategy, the OAG claims, effectively undermines rent control and reduces access to affordable housing.

Red Oak previously appraised or approved almost $55 million in loans to slumlord Ali “Sam”Razjooyan or his associates for properties that would be rented exclusively to voucher holders. 

The lawsuit names several properties, including buildings owned or managed by Jamaal Claggion, Razjooyan associate Richard Cunningham, and Ernst and his partner, Cameron Webb. 

Ernst says his company has never applied for or received a loan from Red Oak. And though Webb says he has never received a Red Oak loan, he would not say whether he has ever applied for one. But an internal Red Oak underwriting document obtained by City Paper contradicts those claims. 

The ‘secret sauce’

The voluntary agreements that are at the heart of Ernst’s strategy provide a legal loophole that permanently jeopardizes access to affordable housing in D.C.

A voluntary agreement allows tenants in rent-controlled buildings to negotiate significant rent increases with their landlord, typically in exchange for improvements, repairs, or buyouts. The law requires that at least 70 percent of a building’s tenants agree to the terms.

Ernst tells City Paper that he used voluntary agreements in two or three buildings that were in such disrepair that they needed full gut renovations.

He explained the risk and rationale behind voluntary agreements on the podcast: “Anita Bonds and the councilmembers are trying to get rid of it, because they’re saying that it’s destroying the affordable housing stock in the city, which is a valid point,” he said. “At the same time, the buildings are in total disrepair, and these tenants are eventually going to pass away, and it’s locking down the rents.”

Mel Zahnd, supervising attorney with Legal Aid, describes voluntary agreements as a “pressure tactic” that landlords often use after issuing threats to raise rents beyond what the rent control law will allow.

Tenants are given an “unfair choice to either agree to a voluntary agreement that gets passed on to future tenants, or face those very significant rent increases themselves, Zahnd says. “That’s just an unfair position to put the tenant in and overall undermines affordability for the city.”

Petra, for instance, was able to legally raise rents at its 67-unit Brightwood property to levels similar to those challenged by the OAG simply by using a voluntary agreement that increased rents by 139 percent to 810 percent—ranging from $1,813 to $3,622. 

Tenants were offered $30,000 to sign the voluntary agreement and move out, according to a copy of a move-out agreement. 

Petra CEO Rashid Salem told City Paper in a 2023 email “in negotiating the Voluntary agreement, we would accommodate any tenant that wants to stay. It is economically unfeasible to renovate a unit or building and not receive rents to offset the cost of construction and modernization. Without this, rent control buildings put owners in a position where they cannot make the capital improvements necessary to keep the buildings up to par.”

Ernst has used voluntary agreements, or purchased buildings where a previous owner’s voluntary agreement already raised rents, several times over. An 11-unit building on Kenyon Street NW saw rent increases ranging from 132 percent to 325 percent after Ernst entered into a voluntary agreement with the tenants in 2018. Every unit experienced an increase of at least $1,500 per month. 

At 3538 6th St. NW, Ernst used a voluntary agreement in 2017, increasing rents between 69 percent and 214 percent. The rent for one unit, which went from $1,152 to $1,950 under the agreement, was later increased to $4,069 in 2019 using another rent control loophole for reconfigured units.

In 2025, Ernst Equities sued DCHA for nearly $50,000 in unpaid rent for a single unit at 3538 6th St. NW. The agency responded in court records by quoting the voucher contract, which says “DCHA shall not make any housing assistance payment if the contract unit does not meet the housing quality standards,” and adding that Ernst “failed to meet these standards as of December 2023.”

Signing these agreements can create perverse incentives for landlords, Zahnd says. 

“What we have seen very often in buildings with voluntary agreements is after the tenants sign voluntary agreements the landlords then will neglect the building, allow conditions to get worse until tenants feel that they have to move, and then the landlord will take those larger rent increases,” he says.

Zahnd notes that while there was political momentum to abolish voluntary agreements, there has been little public explanation for the decision to maintain them. 

“I’m concerned that the current procedures do not sufficiently protect against the predatory nature of voluntary agreements,” he says. “I think these have been used to undermine affordability for many years, and I don’t see much justification for maintaining them.”

As the District reauthorized a tool that erodes affordability, neighboring Montgomery County is using its 2024 rent stabilization law, which applies to more than half of the county’s approximately 114,000 rental units, to address the affordability crisis. 

According to a recent report by the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs, rent stabilization has contributed to stronger housing code enforcement and reduced displacement and housing instability, which disproportionately affect Black, Latino, immigrant, and low- and fixed-income households.

Even as the study from a neighboring jurisdiction points to the positive outcomes for at-risk populations, civil rights advocates raise concerns about the local concentration of voucher holders.

“Voucher holders are essentially being exploited for really high rents and in buildings that have very poor conditions,” says McClannahan of the Equal Rights Center. “This speaks to the larger issue of rampant source of income discrimination in the city, which makes it extremely difficult for voucher holders to find units.

“It creates a predatory submarket in which less scrupulous landlords can try to exploit the rents from the voucher program to make a large profit on units that are not being maintained or would be considered habitable,” McClannahan says.

When cold weather arrives, most people expect to see a bump in their utilities. But many D.C. residents were shocked to see their electricity bills had doubled and even tripled this winter — in some cases, climbing over $1,000 in a single month.

“Your first thought is that it's something you're doing wrong,” said Rawan Abhari, whose February Pepco bill topped out at $303 and whose next bill is projected to be at least $400. But after reading stories about other residents going through the same thing, she realized the problem was bigger than just her household.

Dozens of 51st readers reached out with similar experiences: a $600 bill for a two bedroom apartment; over $400 for a one bedroom. 

It’s hitting home for D.C. lawmakers, too. Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George said she received a Pepco bill for $899. For At-Large Councilmember Robert White, it was $1,100.

Pepco customers say that these bill increases are unsustainable, and that they’re at a loss about what to do about them.

“My bill quadrupled the past two months and I don’t know what to do to fix it,” emailed Alexander, a D.C. resident who asked to go by his first name to maintain his privacy. He lives in a 750 square foot one-bedroom apartment, and says his Pepco bill climbed to $400.

The 51st dug deep into why your electricity bills are rising, and what’s being done about it.

What does Pepco have to say? 

The utility has pointed to the region’s historically cold winter as a cause of rising heating demand and costs. “December 2025 was the coldest December in ten years, followed by a January that also ranked the coldest January of the past decade,” read a February press release.

But in an email to The 51st, Pepco’s own data show that their D.C. customers actually used more energy in January 2025 than January 2026.

A Pepco spokesperson said that because of the way the company’s billing cycle works, it still doesn’t have the full picture for January 2026 energy usage and numbers may shift.  

Some D.C. residents are unconvinced that the cold weather explains the extent of their rising bills, however, and have noted to The 51st that their energy usage isn’t drastically different from months or years past. 

Harrison Pyros, communications coordinator for the public utility advocacy group We Power DC, said that newer buildings, which should be more energy efficient than older homes, were also facing high electricity bills. “They shouldn't be seeing these types of doubling,” Pyros said.

Extreme cold and excessive heat can have an influence on electricity bills — but weather alone doesn’t tell the full story of why residents are seeing drastic changes.

Pepco hikes rates while data centers surge

For about five years, Pepco has been using a new method to raise their rates. Instead of using historic data to propose updated rates — as it has previously done — the utility has used forecasted budgets and projected expenditures to set rates. In other words, Pepco had estimated how much it will spend on new projects and infrastructure in future years, and sought to raise rates to pay for it ahead of time. 

Using this “multiyear rate plan” framework, Pepco has gotten permission to raise rates twice in the last five years: once in 2021 and again in 2024. Each plan calls for rate hikes to take place over the course of multiple years. Both of these plans — the first for $108 million and the second for $123 million — were approved by the D.C. Public Service Commission (DCPSC), which oversees the city’s utility companies. 

Thanks to these plans, Pepco’s rates have gone up almost every year since 2021. In turn, so have electricity bills for D.C. customers. 

The rate hikes aren’t the only part of the electricity bill equation, however. Another variable is the cost of electricity, which Pepco does not control. 

Due to the recent rapid proliferation of data centers — particularly in Northern Virginia, which houses 35% of the world’s data centers — there has been around an $8 to $10 billion cost increase in the regional energy supply since 2024, said Mike Jacobs, who leads the Union of Concerned Scientists’ work on electricity markets and regulatory reform. 

Tough questions for the utility 

When Pepco proposed the multiyear rate hikes to the DCPSC, the company said the projected funds were necessary to cover the costs of grid maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. 

But consumer advocates have questioned the accuracy of Pepco’s budget forecasting. They’ve also said there is too little transparency and accountability around how Pepco actually ends up using the money, as Washington City Paper reported last year. One piece of testimony to the DCPSC found that the utility did not spend the $94 million it collected after its first rate hike.

Last spring, the D.C. Office of the People’s Counsel (which advocates on behalf of utility customers) filed an appeal over the 2024 hike, arguing that the DCPSC ignored required due process for evaluating the initial rate hike.

“We don't know really where the money [from multiyear rate plans] gets shifted oftentimes,” said OPC’s Assistant People's Counsel Ankush Nayar. 

In an email to The 51st, Pepco spokesperson Addie Kauzlarich says the $94 million number is “misunderstood.”

“This was not unused money or funding that went somewhere else. It simply reflects the difference between the projects Pepco planned to complete and put into service during those years and what was actually completed,” Kauzlarich said, citing COVID-related challenges and supply chain issues as reasons for the delay. The utility also earned less than its approved return during this time, she said. 

Pyros is skeptical of this justification. “We as ratepayers are fronting the money and then hoping that a for-profit utility is going to act in good faith and spend that money responsibly,” Pyros said.

As a condition of the second approved rate hike, Pepco agreed to undergo a management audit. The audit was meant to evaluate the accuracy of the company’s forecasted spending — a critical part for understanding how effective Pepco’s multiyear rate plan actually is. Two versions of that audit, a public version and confidential version, were filed to the DCPSC in December. 

In public comments from the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which represents federal facilities serviced by Pepco, the agency wrote that the audit affirmed “serious concerns” about the multiyear rate hikes, and that there was a “fundamental disconnect” between Pepco’s planning, actual costs, and customer benefits.

“Pepco has done a poor job at accurately forecasting costs and billing determinants under the [Multiyear Rate Plan] framework,” reads one line in the 13-page file by the GSA. 

Is the D.C. government doing anything about rising Pepco bills?

There are a handful of bills that D.C. councilmembers are working on to address D.C.’s growing utility affordability crisis. Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau introduced a bill last February that would prohibit electric and gas utility companies from disconnecting services in the winter and summer months for households with vulnerable individuals, including children under 18, seniors aged 65 and older, individuals with disabilities, those who are pregnant or 12 weeks postpartum, and recipients of public assistance programs such as TANF and SNAP.

Another bill introduced last year, by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, would require the Department of Energy and Environment to automatically enroll income-qualifying households into utility assistance programs. “Because the programs make you jump through hoop after hoop after hoop, a lot of people who need it can't even navigate their way through all the different application processes,” said Allen about D.C.’s utility assistance programs.

Last week, Councilmember Robert White introduced a bill titled “Utility Rates and Ratemaking Amendment Act of 2026,” which aims to add guardrails for multiyear rate plans that would “shift the financial burden off of customers.” One major change includes mandating that future rate hikes are proposed on the basis of historic costs, not forecasted budgets.

Allen’s office also just introduced a bill this week that would make it quicker and less costly for residents to get their rooftop solar panels connected into the grid. In a press release, the councilmember’s office said that plug-in technology could save residents 10% to 30% on their electricity bills.“I think that can make a meaningful difference for people who want to be able to put solar on their homes and reduce their costs,” Allen told The 51st.

How can I make my voice heard?

While the D.C. Council doesn’t have direct control over Pepco, they do have oversight power over the DCPSC. The commission has faced immense criticism for voting to approve the multiyear rate hikes that have helped raise prices. On Feb. 27, the D.C. Council is holding a performance oversight hearing for the Public Service Commission, as well as for the Office of the People’s Counsel. 

Any person or organization can register to testify in-person, over Zoom, or submit their testimony online. Pyros says people who are struggling with high electricity bills should show up and share their experience.

We Power DC is also teaming up with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to call for new leadership at the DCPSC. Two commissioners, Chair Emile Thompson and Commissioner Ted Trabue, are currently up for reappointment. 

“With affordability top of mind for D.C. residents this election season, voters deserve a say in choosing a leader who will hold utilities accountable and help bring costs down. That means no reappointments before the November election,” said Claire Mills, D.C. Campaigns Manager at CCAN, in a press release.

The DCPSC also opened an investigation into energy affordability in the District after the OPC filed a petition last November. While the initial comment deadline has passed, a spokesperson for the PSC said that the commission is “always open to additional comments from residents.” Comments can be submitted on the DCPSC’s website.

Terrance Laney serves as the administrator for the Department of Housing and Community Development’s Rental Conversion and Sale Division. In that role, which he’s held since 2019, he is tasked with enforcing tenant rights.

As CASD administrator, Laney has taken a hands-off approach, forcing some tenants to pursue long and costly legal battles to enforce their rights, according to City Paper’s review of Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) Act complaints and lawsuits. 

But Laney also works a side gig through his private law firm where he advertises compliance services for landlords. An Instagram ad for his firm announces: “This year is going to be a huge turnaround year for DC landlords. Contact me ASAP for a consultation,” adding, “Several new exemptions from TOPA and other changes to the law provide landlords seeking to sell their properties with more clarity and certainty.”

“It’s pretty shocking. … You’re not supposed to be doing stuff that relates to your government job,” attorney and Shadow Senator Paul Strauss says of Laney’s dual roles. “If it’s not an actual conflict, it certainly creates the appearance of one, which, in and of itself, is problematic.”

In response to questions about the potential conflict, Laney says that his private legal work primarily focuses on trusts, wills, and estates. He’s only handled a few landlord-tenant eviction cases, he says, where he has represented both tenants and landlords. He emphasizes that none of his firm’s cases have to do with TOPA.

“I’ve taken every D.C. government ethics course about outside employment, and I’m very well aware of what the rules are,” Laney tells City Paper over the phone. “I’m not prohibited from having an additional job. I’m not prohibited in any way by working for myself outside of what I do at DHCD, so long as I’m not doing it on company time with company equipment and also marketing myself outside or trading on my position in D.C. government.”

Laney adds that he checks for conflicts before taking on any private client and would recuse himself from cases related to his agency responsibilities. He says he informed DHCD and the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability about his outside employment, but he would not confirm that either agency gave him official approval.

“You can scour my website,” Laney says. “If you take the time, you won’t even see any reference to the D.C. government.” 

But when City Paper checked the site following the interview, it appeared to have been scrubbed. It now displays only a photo of Laney with the text “Coming Soon.”

One of the deleted pages was saved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It says: “I help landlords comply with Washington, DC housing laws by guiding them through complex regulations, lease requirements, tenant rights, and local compliance standards. From drafting enforceable leases to advising on rent control, housing code obligations, and lawful eviction procedures, I help landlords avoid costly mistakes while protecting their property interests.” 

Another deleted page from Laney’s website says: “Legal help for landlords shouldn’t be expensive or complicated. I provide affordable, straightforward legal services for small property managers and landlords – so you can protect your property and focus on managing it with confidence.” “Compliance” and “enforcement” are listed among the firm’s core services. 

While D.C. government employees are not banned from outside employment, D.C.’s Ethics Manual prohibits them from activities or jobs that “conflict with government duties or interfere with their ability to perform their job,” that “allow others to capitalize on the employee’s official title or position,” or where the employee serves “as an agent or attorney for any outside entity in matters before the District.” The DC Department of Human Resources further advises that jobs creating, or even giving the appearance of, a conflict of interest should be avoided.

Employees designated as public officials are required to disclose all outside employment or business activities that generate income or involve a formal role. The most recent filing for Laney is for 2024—before he established his law practice. 

After City Paper contacted DHCD about Laney’s outside employment, agency spokesperson Tim Wilson says in an email that the matter has been referred to the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability for review and Laney has been put on leave.

Director of Government Ethics Ashley Cooks says the advice they provide to employees is confidential, “so I can’t disclose that information. But “in general, the ethics rules prohibit employees from engaging in outside employment that conflicts with District employment,” she says.

***

Shortly before Laney’s appointment in 2019, former Legal Aid DC Supervising Attorney Beth Mellen raised concerns during testimony before the D.C. Council about lax enforcement of TOPA and housing laws on behalf of tenants.

TOPA is designed to preserve affordable housing for low-income tenants and prevent displacement and “CASD plays a critical role in achieving the purposes of TOPA,” Mellen said in February of that year. She urged councilmembers to fill the job with someone who had expertise in TOPA.  

One of CASD’s main responsibilities is overseeing the implementation and enforcement of TOPA. The law grants tenants the right to match an offer and potentially purchase their building when an owner decides to sell. CASD receives and processes TOPA filings, tracks tenants’ exercise of their rights, provides technical assistance to tenants and landlords, and oversees tenant complaints about noncompliance by property owners. 

“In my role at DHCD, I’m a neutral regulator,” says Laney, who became a licensed attorney in 2024, and started his law firm last October, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2015, Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed Laney as the deputy director of the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Affairs.

But few, if any, tenants who turn to his department for help find relief. According to Wilson, out of the 60 TOPA complaints received by DHCD between May 2020 and May 2025, none have been resolved in the tenants’ favor, primarily due to incomplete or unproven appeals. 

The tenants at the five-unit building at 4021 Third St. SE thought they did everything right after they received notice from their landlord in September 2023 that the property was up for sale. 

They organized a tenant association (the first step in exercising TOPA rights), and in October of that year submitted the registration and letter of interest to the landlord requesting documents required by TOPA, including the sale contract, building floor plan, itemized operating expenses, and the rent roll, which the seller was obligated to provide within seven calendar days. But the landlord’s agent, Dan Crosby, never responded as he’s legally required to do.

One month later, the owner, 1146 17th Street NE LLC, sold the property in violation of TOPA, prompting the tenant association to file a complaint with CASD, according to court records. (Crosby is listed as the LLC’s registered agent; Stephanie Kohan and James Strasbourger are listed as the beneficial owners.)

Laney rejected the tenant association’s petition, writing: “At this juncture, because the Property has already been sold, the Division does not have legal authority to remedy the potential violation of your rights. The Division is tasked with regulatory enforcement which occurs before a violation occurs. Because the tenant association’s rights appear to have been violated, your situation is now a legal matter for which you will require an attorney’s representation.”

The tenants appealed Laney’s decision to the D.C. Court of Appeals, arguing that the agency’s refusal to act was arbitrary and legally flawed and that DHCD has broad enforcement powers, including the ability to issue orders, impose fines, and seek court enforcement—even after a violation has taken place. The appeals court sent the case back to DHCD in June of last year, and Laney issued a new decision—this time granting the petition and finding that the landlord failed to negotiate in good faith with the tenants. 

After a lengthy fight to get DHCD to confirm that their TOPA rights were violated, the tenants filed suit in D.C. Superior Court this week against the landlord and the new owner, Bapky LLC. 

Another Court of Appeals ruling, in February 2024, sharply criticized DHCD for mishandling tenants’ TOPA petitions. 

That case started in 2021, when landlord Vaughan McLean LLC sought to sell hundreds of units it owned in the McLean Gardens condominium complex. (Beneficial owners of the LLC include Michael Albert, Christie Heberle, and Richard Cohen; all of them list an address in New York City.)

The landlord claimed each of the units were single-family homes and were therefore exempt from TOPA. (The D.C. Council exempted most single-family accommodations from TOPA in 2018.)

But a group of tenants objected in petitions to DHCD in September 2021, arguing that because the buildings contained multiple rental units—and had previously been classified as multifamily housing—the sale should trigger TOPA’s stronger protections, including the right to purchase.

Laney rejected the tenants’ petitions in July 2022, concluding that the units were single condominium units and therefore covered by the exemption. 

The tenants, upon discovering that their landlord communicated with Laney in private, asked for the decision to be reviewed again about a week later, which Laney again denied. In their request, the tenants highlighted the private communication as a “shocking violation of one of the most basic norms of the legal practice.”

Tenants appealed Laney’s decisions, and again the Court of Appeals found significant problems with his analysis.

“Because DHCD’s rulings contain factual findings not supported by substantial evidence and legal conclusions for which we cannot discern a basis, we reverse DHCD’s denial of these petitions and remand to allow DHCD to provide more complete and accurate grounds for its decision,” the court ruled in February 2024. 

***

Last October, the Council passed the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords (RENTAL) Act, which eliminated TOPA rights for large swaths of tenants. 

In a Zoom meeting earlier this month hosted by the trade group called the Small Multifamily Owners Association, Laney spoke directly to the landlords in attendance on the law’s implementation.

Laney explained that property owners seeking to claim the new construction exemption to TOPA—which, he said, could also apply to renovated buildings—must notify tenants before March 31 that the property is no longer subject to TOPA. But, he added, there is no penalty for failing to send this notice.

Laney said the new rules now require DHCD to issue written certifications of TOPA compliance, which can be filed with the Recorder of Deeds, within five days of receiving notice from an owner. According to Strauss, this change will make it more difficult for tenants to bring successful TOPA complaints.

Strauss adds that the previous CASD administrator, Lauren Pair, “was very personally motivated to find the right answer and make what she considered to be good law. Terrance has been more procedurally oriented. … You couldn’t really have a lengthy phone call with him on the merits of anything. So they had very different styles.”

In response to a question from a landlord about TOPA transactions, Laney advised, “I would push that person to talk to a lawyer, because when you’re talking about specific actions I can take that are favorable or disfavorable to me in this process, that’s bordering on legal advice.”

D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced a sweeping civil lawsuit this week against Ali “Sam” Razjooyan, his brother Eimon “Ray” Razjooyan, and their mother, Houri Razjooyan, accusing them of operating a vast illegal real estate empire.

Schwalb says the lawsuit is the first time a landlord in D.C. has been accused of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, which is typically used to take down mob bosses and organized crime. The complaint also alleges violations of  the Consumer Protection Procedures Act and the District’s False Claims Act. The AG says that under RICO and the FCA, “the Razjooyans can be held liable for three times the amount they owe for their fraud (known as treble damages) as well as civil penalties payable to the District.”

According to the complaint, the Razjooyan family has controlled more than 70 rent-controlled buildings totaling more than 600 units, primarily in Wards 7 and 8. The family, who own neighboring multimillion-dollar townhouses in Potomac, allegedly defrauded lenders and the city while subjecting low-income tenants to dangerous and deplorable housing conditions.

The lawsuit claims the Razjooyans used fake documents and false renovation promises to secure loans on rent-stabilized buildings, telling lenders they would upgrade units and receive higher rents by leasing to voucher holders. 

Instead, the complaint alleges, they diverted loan proceeds to enrich themselves, pay off earlier debts, and acquire additional properties—a “Ponzi-like scheme” designed to sustain and expand their operation, according to the lawsuit.

The Razjooyans’ various properties deteriorated into uninhabitable conditions, racking up 4,000 housing code violations and leaving low-income, mostly Black tenants living with rodent and insect infestations, gas leaks, electrical hazards, mold, flooding, and piles of trash. Even as conditions worsened, the complaint alleges, the Razjooyans falsely certified the units as safe and habitable, defrauding District agencies out of more than $16 million in housing subsidy payments.

The lawsuit contains a detailed chart of properties, loans, and LLCs tied to the Razjooyans, and its allegations of RICO violations allow the attorney general to pursue the family’s entire ongoing enterprise, rather than targeting individual buildings.

The AG’s case confirms much of City Paper’s previous reporting, including accounts from tenants in multiple Razjooyan-managed buildings who endured months without heat, repeated flooding, inhumane conditions, and threats of eviction. 

Tenants also said promised repairs and upgrades never materialized, and some were tricked out of their rights under D.C.’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as TOPA. City Paper’s investigation revealed patterns of inflated appraisals, doctored loan documents, and “flip fees” that enriched Sam Razjooyan and his associates while leaving tenants displaced or living in unsafe conditions.

According to the attorney general, the alleged neglect carried broader consequences: As dozens of units fell into disrepair and tenants fled what the complaint describes as unlivable conditions, the city’s already strained affordable housing supply shrank further, deepening the District’s housing crisis.

Sam Razjooyan did not respond to a request for comment.

“Today, we’re dismantling the Razjooyan slumlord empire,” Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a press release. “D.C. has a serious housing affordability problem, and slumlords like the Razjooyans make things worse by decreasing the available housing supply and forcing tenants to live in horrific conditions. Their business model, by design, preys on tenants for profit—cheating banks, private lenders, and the DC government along the way. Instead of addressing each building individually, we’re attacking the very foundation of their illegal operation.”

The lawsuit seeks to ban the Razjooyans from owning or operating rental properties in the District, recover restitution for tenants, and impose financial penalties. The AG’s office is also asking the court to place the properties under receivership to ensure critical repairs and compliance with housing standards. 

But ownership at least one of the buildings in the Razjooyan’s enterprise has been taken back by the lender, who is represented by yet another notorious slumlord. 

***

According to the complaint, Sam Razjooyan’s reputation among lenders and tenant advocates has deteriorated amid media scrutiny and multiple court cases, making it difficult for him to secure financing directly. 

Razjooyan concealed his involvement in building transactions by using straw buyers to acquire properties and obtain loans, the AG alleges. Those “foot soldiers” allegedly helped disguise transactions among each other, which were falsely represented as arm’s-length sales, in order to keep properties within the enterprise’s control and inflate property values to generate additional financing. 

The alleged straw purchasers identified in the complaint include Elenora Hill and Wilbur McReynolds, who recently admitted liability for violations of the District’s Tenant Receivership Act and Consumer Protection Procedures Act over their ownership of the property at 4559 Benning Rd. SE, one of the properties listed in the RICO complaint. 

The building, which had a tax assessed value of almost $3.3 million in 2025, was purchased from Razjooyan for $11.8 million in July of that year. 

By August, inspectors found severe fire hazards at the property, including inoperable fire alarms, cut power lines to alarm systems, and an active gas leak, along with unsafe gas lines throughout the building. Tenants—including families with young children—had to be evacuated to emergency hotel housing, according to court records. Two days later, the District filed an emergency petition seeking to appoint a receiver. 

During a hearing to determine whether to appoint a receiver for the property last September, McReynolds repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned about the property’s finances, stating: “Upon the advice of counsel, I assert my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution and refuse to answer that question.” 

The court ultimately approved the receivership. 

***

The property at 1850 Kendall St. NE, which is also part of the RICO case, exemplifies a broader pattern of deceit, neglect, and inhumane conditions at Razjooyan-affiliated properties.

In July 2025, lender Genesis Capital, LLC filed a lawsuit against Razjooyan and his LLC (1850-1854 Kendall St. NE, LLC) for $7.99 million. The California-based lender alleged that Razjooyan’s LLC defaulted on a $5.9 million loan. According to the complaint, Razjooyan’s LLC amassed $57,116 in unpaid property taxes, $74,238 in delinquent water and sewer charges, and $63,252 in fines from the DC Department of Buildings.

Odell Blocker III, a former investor in the LLC, said he lost a significant amount of money in the deal. In a phone call with City Paper last year, Blocker explained that he connected with Razjooyan through an online investment group website, describing it as “Craigslist for investments.”

According to Blocker, the foreclosed property was purchased at a trustee’s sale, and the final price was $100,000 to $200,000 above what LLC members had initially agreed to pay. Razjooyan allegedly attributed the increase to additional costs incurred under TOPA. Properties sold in foreclosure are exempt from TOPA, according to Joel Cohn, legislative director with the Office of the Tenant Advocate. 

Blocker said he exited the LLC in 2023 or 2024, adding, “when guys play these kinds of games, it’s usually not a good use of time. It’s best to get away from people who don’t do good business and stay away.”

Since Razjooyan’s LLC purchased the Kendall Street NE buildings in March 2021, they have been cited by District inspectors with 220 housing code violations and assessed almost $174,000 in fines. 

The potential safety issues in the building were evident as early as August 2021. Inspectors cited the owner for installing electrical wiring and new gas and plumbing lines without permits and for ignoring multiple stop-work orders, according to Office of Administrative Hearings records.

At that time, the director of DCRA (an agency that since has been split into two, separate agencies) warned Razjooyan in a letter that “remediation performed poorly and without compliance with building codes, including the use of unlicensed contractors, endangers future residents of these properties as well as the general public.”

Richard Balles, who the complaint identifies as an alleged straw buyer, is listed on several fire safety citations between October 2024 and 2025, including a February 2025 citation stating that the structure “is unsafe or dangerous to the life, health, property or safety of the public or the occupants of the structure because it contains unsafe equipment,” and requiring that the owner to “repair all damage from the fire and the associated firefighting efforts.”

Balles tells City Paper he is “infuriated” to be named alongside Razjooyan in the AG’s lawsuit.  

“It’s so sad, it’s wrong. We did nothing wrong,” Balles says. “We lost so much money because of Sam, and we are accused of helping him. I don’t understand where the AG can say these things with no proof whatsoever.”

Between March 2024 and April 2025, Razjooyan received more than $900,000 in government subsidy payments through the Greater Washington Urban League for the Kendall Street NE property, according to court records.

In March 2025, a fire broke out in the building. Bystanders took photos of firefighters extinguishing the flames and of tenants who could be displaced, including an elderly woman.

***

Razjooyan’s alleged straw buyers purchased Minnesota Commons, a 83-unit complex in Southeast, in April 2024, after receiving an inflated loan that included payment of a $4 million “flip fee” to another Razjooyan associate—an unusually high amount for the type of fee.

“I hope that they can finally win a case against him because otherwise all of this will be for nothing,” Minnesota Commons tenant association president Ernest Wilkerson says. Referring to Razjooyan, he adds: “He walks away with a lot of money and feeling invincible, and he will do it again.”

Wilkerson says the building was well-maintained when he first moved in. But when Razjooyan purchased it, Wilkerson says, “things went downhill fast. Maintenance stopped, pest control treatments stopped, and trash accumulated everywhere. 

“We had multiple floods and burst pipes that collapsed people’s ceilings,” he says. “Our heat kept going out and rodents ran rampant. Our landlord started doing all kinds of construction and took windows off of vacant apartments, leaving them completely open to the elements, and people came in and stole the copper pipes, causing even more problems for us. My neighbors and I are grateful that the Office of the Attorney General is filing this lawsuit to put a stop to all of this.”

But as Wilkerson grapples with the experience with Razjooyan, he is apprehensive about the future of Minnesota Commons, which is now owned by lender Red Oak. 

Wilkerson says tenants have been given a new contact person at Red Oak: Carter Nowell. 

Nowell is the former owner of Sanford Capital, another notorious slumlord, who was forced to exit the D.C. housing market for seven years under a 2018 consent agreement with the D.C. attorney general’s office. 

In an email to Wilkerson, Nowell introduced himself as “an advisor and local owner’s representative for Red Oak.”

Surging health insurance premiums and new limits on Medicaid access left tens of thousands of D.C. residents with worse healthcare options when the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1.

“I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, and I haven’t seen a single year where benefits were cut as deeply for as many people,” said Ed Lazere, director of legislative advocacy at the United Planning Organization, an anti-poverty nonprofit serving D.C. 

The scale and speed of changes to local healthcare programs that went into effect at the start of this year, partly set in motion by the budget that the D.C. Council approved in July and exacerbated by federal cuts, have outraged advocates and raised concerns about more people being burdened with unaffordable bills or losing health insurance altogether.

About 16,000 people were pushed off of Medicaid due to a local decision to reduce the program’s income limit. Most of them — 14,490 people — were automatically transferred to a new program called Healthy DC, also known as the Basic Health Plan, which lacks dental and vision coverage.

But 1,600 former Medicaid members make too much to qualify for Healthy DC, according to Mila Kofman, executive director of D.C.’s Health Benefit Exchange Authority. They’ll have to begin paying monthly premiums on D.C.’s Affordable Care Act marketplace — premiums that will be higher than normal because Congress failed to extend premium tax credit enhancements past Jan. 1.

Another 3,500 residents on the local ACA marketplace will also see a jump in their premiums, Kofman said. The most impacted are a group of 1,000 people who will no longer receive any premium relief at all. A 60-year-old couple on the higher end of the marketplace making $85,000 per year, for example, will now have to pay $31,362 annually to maintain health insurance — over a third of their income according to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Finally, the lower income limit for Medicaid also reduces access to Emergency Medicaid, which provides coverage during medical emergencies for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid because of their immigration status. The exact number of people affected by this change is fuzzy, but it’s in the thousands. 

Back in October, about 2,200 people lost their insurance on DC Health Care Alliance — which covers immigrants who are ineligible for Medicaid — as part of a plan to eliminate adult coverage on that program by October 2027. Meanwhile, around 7,000 other low-income immigrants have stopped receiving insurance since November 2024, likely for reasons related to more restrictive renewal policies and fear of immigration enforcement, according to the Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF).

Claudia Sosa, a student at Briya Public Charter School, described the fear and stress that she and others in D.C.’s low-income communities have already experienced as a result of local cuts to healthcare funding.

“We want to stay healthy so that we can work, raise our children and not have to choose between healthcare or paying rent or [bills],” Sosa said at a December roundtable discussion. “I share my story today because those [changes] are not just a member or policy decision. They affect real people. When service [is] taken away, families delay care, live in pain and lose stability.”

High-stakes decisions

Deputy Mayor for D.C. Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage has presented the changes as essential to balancing the District’s finances in an unusually punishing budget year. At last month’s roundtable, which lasted over six hours, he estimated that changes to Alliance, Medicaid, and the Immigrant Children’s Program will save the District about $1.2 billion over the next four years. 

“Despite the many well-meaning comments to the contrary from some of our public witnesses today, the budget implications of these policy changes cannot be responsibly or legally ignored,” Turnage said.

A group of advocates confronted Turnage and other DHCF officials while in the hallway outside the meeting.

A woman pushing a young child in a stroller told Turnage that she lost her insurance on Oct. 1 despite earning no income as a full-time caretaker — something that wasn’t supposed to happen. The Ward 4 resident, who asked to remain anonymous because of her immigration status, said she has pre-diabetes that she fears will get worse without medicine and regular checkups.

“I came here not just to fight for my own health, but our entire community,” the mother of two told The 51st, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter. “I know a lot of people who have chronic illnesses, people who are dying slowly.”

Turnage advised the woman to call his policy director to restore her coverage, and also gave her his own cellphone number to follow up. But advocates worry about others falling through the cracks as a result of such major changes to so many programs — especially since affected populations include many hourly workers whose incomes vary throughout the year, which could risk confusion about eligibility.

Technical problems may also cause people to lose health insurance or experience gaps in coverage. For instance, about 1,100 Healthy DC applications had data issues requiring manual processing. As of Dec. 23, the Health Benefit Exchange Authority was still reviewing 187 of these.

Councilmember Christina Henderson, who chairs the Council’s health committee, noted that historically, D.C. has had one of the most robust healthcare systems in the country. She fears this could change, especially if large numbers of people end up losing coverage unnecessarily.

“Because of fiscal constraints and other policy challenges to no fault of our own, I fear we’re hustling backwards,” she said at the meeting. “Now, how [far] backwards we go? I think that’s up to us, in terms of the work that we do on the outreach side.”

How D.C.’s Medicaid cuts affect residents

Dropping the Medicaid income limit — from around 215% of the federal poverty level, or $34,000 a year for a one-person household, to 138%, or $22,000 per year — will hit people differently depending on their income and immigration status.

The creation of Healthy DC softens the blow substantially for one tax bracket — but for people who earn slightly more, changes at the federal level exacerbate the impact. The reduced cap also has secondary effects on many low-income immigrants.

On the one hand, Kofman, who has been overseeing the creation of Healthy DC, characterized shifting thousands of people from Medicaid to the new program as a smart piece of footwork, at least from a budget perspective. Unlike Medicaid, Healthy DC is fully federally funded and requires no local dollars. 

While it has fewer benefits than Medicaid, its members still receive coverage with no out-of-pocket costs. 

“This is a really good deal for states, in terms of budgets and balancing where resources go,” Kofman said.

However, Healthy DC has an income cap at 200% of the federal poverty level, as opposed to Medicaid’s previous 215%. Kofman is worried about the 1,600 people who are getting pushed off of Medicaid and will now have to figure out whether they can pay ACA marketplace premiums.

She also worries about those already on the marketplace who just lost their tax credit enhancements — especially the 1,000 people who, she said, will receive no relief at all because their income is too high. This group includes many small business owners and other self-employed people.

“I’m very concerned about this population,” Kofman said. “Even people who qualify for some premium relief — it is not going to be sufficient, especially [for] people who need medical care and … will be faced with deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.”

Many undocumented people in D.C., meanwhile, now have fewer healthcare options than ever as a result of the Medicaid changes.

Back in October, Alliance cut 2,200 people loose from care: lowering its income limit in a way that mirrors the new Medicaid change. A large portion of these beneficiaries were undocumented or had a tenuous immigration status, so only 55 were identified as potentially eligible for Healthy DC or other programs, according to DHCF.

Now, as of Jan. 1, the reduced income limit for Emergency Medicaid took away one of the only remaining coverage options for these former Alliance members if they end up in an emergency room. In many cases, healthcare experts say, they’ll now either be left with severe medical debt, or hospitals will have to shoulder the costs of uncompensated care.

“If they don’t qualify for Emergency Medicaid, I think they’ll probably get those bills,” said Andrew Patterson, senior counsel on Legal Aid DC’s Public Benefits Law Unit. “Maybe they can try to work something out with the hospital. Maybe there’s a charity care application. But there won’t be an insurance option for those folks, if they’re not able to get Emergency Medicaid.”

While Alliance membership took one of its biggest hits in October, it also fell throughout the rest of 2025. Between November 2024 and November 2025, according to data from DHCF, the number of people enrolled in Alliance and the Immigrant Children’s Program (which combined with Alliance in October) decreased by a total of 7,720 adults and 1,412 minors. 

Part of this decrease was because, since April, Alliance members without social security numbers can no longer automatically renew their coverage. They now have to re-enroll manually in order to keep their health insurance. Turnage also attributed part of the drop in enrollment to concerns about immigration arrests.

“People became less visible and less active in the community, and unfortunately, that probably also meant some of them were disenrolling from Alliance,” he said.

Turnage predicted that declines in Alliance membership will continue throughout 2026, further increasing the number of D.C. residents without health insurance.

Healthcare advocates score a win

In spite of the new cutbacks, a piece of good news arrived over the holidays for the remaining 24,000 members of Alliance. On Christmas Eve, D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer approved a transfer of $21.5 million in contingency funding that the D.C. Council had set aside for the program if revenue allowed for it.

While Alliance members lost some of their benefits, like dental and vision insurance, on Oct. 1, the new funding suggests that current members will see some or all of their previous benefits restored through at least this October.

“What might seem like a Christmas miracle is really the result of persistent organizing,” DC Jobs With Justice data organizer Alex Samuels wrote in a recent newsletter. “Since the spring, we have been unrelenting in our demand that DC restore the DC Healthcare Alliance.”

More clarity on the impact of the additional funding is expected to come by the end of the week. This could end months of uncertainty for care providers over what medications Alliance will cover, while lessening pressure on health centers that have stepped up to provide Alliance members with dental care.

Legal Aid DC and Bread for the City are hosting two clinics later this month to answer questions from people affected by various healthcare changes:

• Jan. 22 from 10 a.m. to noon at Bread for the City’s southeast center (1700 Marion Barry Ave. SE)
• Jan. 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Bread for the City’s northwest center (1525 7th Street NW)

Advocates, meanwhile, have been gearing up for a fight over the future of Alliance and D.C.’s healthcare system as a whole during this year’s budget season.

At last month’s meeting, the Rev. William Young, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Ward 8, cast upcoming decisions in religious terms: arguing that the District’s leaders, including those on the D.C. Council, have a moral imperative to protect what he sees as a basic human right.

“Do you really want it to be said, when the history books are written about you, about how the District of Columbia survived the time of tyranny, that you aided and abetted in the decline of healthcare in a city that you serve?” Young said. “The story that could be told about this Council could be glorious: that it resisted in the face of tyranny, that it fought for the ones that Jesus called the least of these, that it was a model of righteous government in a time of normalized racism and xenophobia. That story could still be told about this Council.”

When Phillip Brown was pulled over for a traffic violation back in January, D.C. police officers saw red Solo cups in the car and suspected they contained alcohol. When asked, Brown handed them over to the officers, but then drove away from the scene. Following MPD policy, the officers didn’t chase after him. They had his tags on camera, and, according to court records, found and arrested him the next day without incident. 

Ten months later, when officers believed Brown, 33, tried to flee again from a traffic stop on Benning Road NE, he narrowly missed being killed by three bullets. The difference? Federal agents were involved this time.

The incident in mid-October was one of two shootings that took place in the span of a month involving agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency has been embedded with the Metropolitan Police Department since President Donald Trump surged federal resources into the city in August to fight crime. The second shooting, which took place on the same road and also involved HSI officers, occurred after federal officers tried to pull over a driver and then gave chase after he refused to stop. 

The cases — both of which happened in Ward 7 — highlight how federal agents patrolling in D.C. don’t follow the same protocols that MPD officers do. Most of them also undergo different types of training, have vastly different levels of experience policing in an urban environment, and answer to different political leaders and priorities.

“We have rules and regulations we operate by,” says Ronald Hampton, who was an MPD officer for 23 years and served as a member of the D.C. Police Reform Commission in 2020 and 2021. “It’s not perfect, but at least there’s accountability. The feds don’t have anything like that. And federal police don’t have the kind of training that local police do. Realistically they can do almost anything they want, and no one is there to check them.”

On October 17, Brown was driving to get milk for his three young kids, according to his lawyer. D.C. police patrolling with federal agents tried to pull him over because the car had tinted windows and was missing a front license plate. Believing that the driver was trying to flee, a federal agent shot three times into the car. Brown’s lawyer said the gunfire came so close that a bullet hole was found in the collar of his jacket.

An HSI spokesman told The Washington Post that the agent was “in fear for his life,” though Brown was unarmed and a D.C. police officer later said that none of the officers involved had been standing in front of the car. All charges against Brown were eventually dropped.

Less than a month later and just a few blocks away, local and federal police attempted to stop Justin Bryant Nelson for allegedly running a red light. When Nelson refused to stop, federal agents started pursuing him, according to court documents. At one point, Nelson allegedly threw his car in reverse to get around traffic and hit a police cruiser. An HSI agent shot at the car before the chase continued. Amid the pursuit, an unmarked federal vehicle struck a Metrobus. Nelson was later detained, and now faces felony charges of fleeing from police, leaving after a collision, and reckless driving.

Both incidents highlight significant differences in how local and federal police respond to crime, as well as what systems of accountability exist for when they use deadly force. 

"As a mayor I would be very concerned that a fatality could happen on my watch because the feds are running roughshod," says Yaida Ford, a D.C.-based attorney who has sued both local and federal police for excessive uses of force. "We need some transparency. At least then we know that someone is fighting on our behalf."

Training and tactics

Ever since Trump surged federal agents into D.C., residents have struggled to identify and keep track of the alphabet-soup of agencies on the ground. Most visible have been HSI, ICE, CBP, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, and the Diplomatic Security Service (which normally protects diplomatic interests and personnel worldwide). But the DEA, ATF, and IRS Criminal Investigation (they usually go after tax cheats and financial crimes) have also been seen on patrol. 

Both shootings over the last month involved HSI agents — whose typical remit is digging into the illegal movement of people, goods, money, contraband, weapons, and sensitive technology into the U.S. — raising significant questions about their training to operate in an urban environment and the tactics they may be using. (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from The 51st.)

“It’s pretty clear that Homeland Security does not have the kinds of carefully thought-out requirements for hiring officers. It doesn’t have the extensive training for its officers, and we’re seeing this in these shootings,” says D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.

Some residents also worry that these officers lack an intimate understanding of the city’s neighborhoods and nuances, which could result in overly aggressive policing. 

“I don’t think it’s folks who are familiar with D.C.,” says Chioma Iwuoha, a Ward 7 resident and member of the leadership of the D.C. Democratic Party, of the federal agents she has seen out in neighborhoods near her.

And there are significant differences in rules and policies the forces abide by. Residents have been outraged for months, for example, that federal agents have been obscuring their identities, but it is entirely legal for them to do so. In contrast, D.C. police officers are required by law to be identifiable when in uniform, and, according to MPD’s code of conduct, must provide their name and badge number “in a respectful and polite manner.” And while local police officers have to wear body-worn cameras and turn them on anytime they interact with the public (and residents are entitled to view footage in which they are a subject), most federal agents do not.   

Of relevance to both recent shootings, D.C. police are barred from chasing a driver unless they’re suspected of having committed a violent crime or posing a direct risk to others. Thousands of people have been killed in police chases, and the District is among a number of jurisdictions that have sought to limit their use. (Prince George’s County just approved new restrictions in the wake of a crash that killed a three-year-old earlier this year. New York City also imposed new limits on car chases after data showed that 25% of chases resulted in property damage or injuries.) Federal agents, though, do not have to abide by the city’s restrictions. 

That federal agents are able to do things that D.C. police can’t raises another critical question: When they all patrol together, who’s actually in charge? We didn’t receive any answers when we put the question to MPD, but a source within the department says it’s safe to assume that federal agents operate independently of any rules that apply to local cops. 

“It is definitely troubling that as the District government we don’t have the same authority over the increasing number of federal agents,” says Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder.

Mayor Muriel Bowser — who formalized cooperation with federal agencies by creating a task force — conceded this month that law enforcement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security have been “problematic.”

Transparency

When shootings involving MPD officers happen, there are laws and regulations requiring that specific information be shared. The two recent shootings, though, show the significant gap in transparency that exists when federal agents pull the trigger.

Under D.C. law, body-worn camera footage and the names of involved officers are usually released within five days of any significant use of deadly force. Federal agents don’t generally use body-worn cameras, though, and it seems that the city’s law on disclosing related footage doesn’t apply when federal agents use force. Even local lawmakers haven’t been fully briefed. Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the D.C. Council’s judiciary committee, has requested body-worn camera footage from the officers who accompanied the federal agents during those two shootings but has yet to receive it.

Relatedly, the federal agents can continue to remain anonymous, identified only by the agency they work for. In Nelson’s case, for example, it was a mix of agents from HSI, DSS, and the U.S. Marshals Service. And in Brown’s case, the shooting by the HSI agent wasn’t even included in the initial police report of the incident, sparking cries of a potential coverup. D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith rejected those accusations late last month, but it still remains unclear why the shooting wasn’t initially reported in official documents.

Some civil rights attorneys say that not identifying federal agents who shoot their guns in D.C. complicates attempts to hold them accountable and can embolden such behavior in the future — including by D.C. police.

“The difficulty here is that we don’t know who the officers are and so, from a civil rights perspective, not knowing who to sue is the first problem,” says Ford, the civil rights attorney. “From a social governance perspective, when there is no transparency, the rotten apples … are emboldened. I’m not saying we have a majority of rotten apples, but you have the few who will use this lack of transparency as a license to abuse their authority. This is what I’m afraid we’re going to see.”

Accountability 

A pair of recent shootings by D.C. police officers — one in Georgetown last week, another in Deanwood this week — further highlights the contrasts between local police and federal agents. 

MPD leadership immediately held press briefings on both incidents and placed the involved officers on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Each of those incidents will additionally be scrutinized by MPD’s Use of Force Review Board. (Reports from all the incidents reviewed in 2024 and 2025 are here.)

It isn’t clear whether any such comparable process exists for federal agents, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions on whether it will investigate the incidents itself. While DHS does have a use-of-force standard and has published data on incidents for as recently as 2023, HSI is not listed as one of the agencies covered. (An update to the use-of-force standards from that same year also restricts shooting into or at vehicles, spare under the most extreme circumstances.)

And while MPD takes the lead on digging into the use of deadly force by any type of police officer or agent operating in D.C., including feds, there’s no standard for how federal agencies would respond to the outcome. 

All such investigations are ultimately shared with the U.S. Attorney for D.C.’s office, which can pursue civil rights charges if the facts point in that direction. (Last year, for example, the office pursued charges against a special police officer — a licensed private security guard with arrest powers — for unreasonably using force against someone they were arresting.) But the Trump administration and its U.S. attorney in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, may be less likely to do so. Earlier this year, Trump granted clemency to Terence Sutton, the D.C. police officer who was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2020 death of a 20 year old during a chase along Kennedy Street NW. 

Put together, Iwuoha says she doubts that there will be much — if any — accountability for the two recent shootings involving HSI agents.

“If MPD has a shooting, there is a system of accountability. I could submit something to the Office of Police Complaints, I could ask the [district] commander to review it,” she says. “But I don’t know who the hell these [federal agents] are. If the only system of accountability I have is to reach out to MPD leadership and have them reach out to the federal agency, that doesn’t feel like a system of accountability.” 

These issues could get worse

While Trump’s official crime emergency ended in September, his surge of federal agents and their cooperation with MPD is expected to continue for the time being. The mayor has said that she’s working to pull ICE and HSI agents off of D.C. streets, but she doesn’t have the power to make that happen.

Ford tells The 51st that she’s worried that there may be more incidents to come like the two recent shootings. “I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she says. “We’re fortunate that no one was killed. But if there is a fatality … that changes things for everyone.”

Mendelson is concerned that the continued presence of federal agents on D.C. streets could diminish the trust that residents have in MPD.  

“The public generally does not distinguish between different police agencies,” he says. “If a police officer is busy shooting innocent people, that’s a bad look for all of law enforcement even though most of the departments have nothing to do with it. So it’s hurting MPD.” (Similar concerns have been raised around MPD's apparent cooperation with ICE.)

In the meantime, other federal agencies have shifted toward more aggressive policing tactics that could be used in D.C. 

The U.S. Park Police loosened its policy on car chases over the summer, allowing its officers to pursue drivers for little more than traffic violations. The Washington Post reported that the new policy has led to an increased number of chases in the city — and crashes. The agency is also looking to almost double its manpower in D.C., which could make it a more significant player in local law enforcement.  

And even the city’s own efforts at transparency and accountability are under threat, as Republican lawmakers try to reverse local police reforms. In September, the House passed a bill that would essentially gut the city’s policies that restrict police chases, and on Wednesday night it approved a measure to repeal the D.C. law that requires the disclosure of body-worn camera footage and the names of officers involved in deadly uses of force. (That same laws also bars MPD from hiring officers fired from other police agencies for misconduct.)

“What’s dangerous is that Congress is trying to repeal all that stuff that we did that led to accountability,” says Hampton, the former D.C. police officer. “And for what reason? Police shouldn’t have carte blanche when they have the power to take a person’s life.”

Melvine Perkins has spent years trying to pull herself out of poverty — working temp jobs, applying for rental aid, and doing everything possible to stay in housing. But in a city where rent costs outpace wages and assistance often runs dry, each step forward seems to push her two steps back. Now, after years of fighting to stay in her one-bedroom apartment, she’s again facing eviction.

“It’s just by the grace of God that I have the mental bandwidth to not crash and burn. I’m telling you I have been through it,” she told Street Sense/The 51st. “I’m not in this situation because I want to be.”

Perkins spent nearly a decade cycling in and out of homelessness after losing her Maryland house and her nail salon business during the 2008 financial crisis. She lived for several years in a women’s shelter in Northwest D.C. It wasn’t until 2020, when she got a job tracing COVID-19 cases for the city and received a housing subsidy from the city’s Rapid Rehousing Program that she was able to move into a Ward 6 apartment that cost $1,800 a month.

“I remember thanking God that living that nightmare was over,” she says. “I looked forward to a good night’s sleep and taking a hot bath.”

But Perkins lost her housing subsidy in late 2021 when she hit the program’s one-year cutoff. A few months later, her contract job with D.C. Health ended, leaving her with no income and no safety net.

She received emergency rental assistance from the city twice over the next two years, which covered a few months of her missed rent but not enough to catch up. Perkins eventually landed a new job at the U.S. Census Bureau, bringing in just over $1,000 a month, but it wasn’t enough to keep pace with her rising rent.

Perkins now owes more than $55,000 in back rent, and her landlord has filed for eviction. Climbing out of debt, she says, has felt nearly impossible without more assistance or a higher-paying job — both of which have been hard to secure while also navigating court hearings, legal filings, and the constant paperwork tied to her case. She has agreed to move out by the end of October as part of a negotiated resolution to her case.

“Every day I wake up, I feel like I am in a mental obstacle course,” she says. 

Perkins isn’t alone: Last year, completed evictions in the District rose to record levels, with 1,869 households removed from their homes under a court order. That rise marked the largest increase since the year before the pandemic, according to new data from the Office of the Tenant Advocate obtained and analyzed by Street Sense, The 51st, and American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. And these trends show no signs of slowing down. By the end of June 2025, the city had already recorded at least 1,477 completed evictions, with three months left in the fiscal year, nearing totals seen in the entire year pre-pandemic.

While final numbers won’t be available until early next year, average monthly evictions in D.C. are the highest they’ve been in six years. Before the pandemic, the city averaged about 124 evictions a month. That number dropped sharply during COVID, but jumped to roughly 156 per month in fiscal year 2024 – and has climbed even higher in 2025, averaging 164 each month so far. 

Advocates say the District’s eviction surge is not the product of a single policy shift but the collision of several forces — dwindling rent assistance, the rollback of laws meant to protect tenants, and the end of the pandemic eviction moratorium — in a city with some of the steepest rents in the country. And now they worry a new law, the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants and Landlords (RENTAL) Act, which the council approved last month and is designed to move eviction cases through the courts more quickly, could intensify those pressures.

“At the end of the day, it is actually pretty simple. It’s very unaffordable rent and a drawback of tenant protections and supports that are causing this kind of deluge of evictions,” Daniel Del Pielago, housing director with Empower DC, a grassroots tenant advocacy group, tells Street Sense/The 51st.

More evictions, advocates say, means more people trapped in a cycle of poverty that strains city services — from emergency shelters to hospitals — and makes it harder for the District to retain residents and curb its growing unhoused population, which fell by 9% in 2025 but remains among the highest per-capita in the region. And while completed evictions offer one measure of the crisis, they represent only a fraction of cases. Tens of thousands of eviction cases are filed in D.C. each year, most of which don’t result in a person being formally removed.

Research from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab shows that even just an eviction filing on your record — whether or not it results in a tenant being removed — can have lasting consequences. Tenants who face eviction often struggle to rent again, as many landlords treat any filing as a red flag. They also face a higher risk of job loss, as the stress and instability of eviction can interfere with work schedules, commuting, and overall performance.

For Perkins, just having a landlord file against her has made life harder — from renting an apartment to passing a credit check or landing a job.

“Displacement causes years of financial hardships,” Perkins says. “Rental ledgers do not reflect the truth of a person’s character.” 

A tale of two cities

For some tenants, one layoff or missed paycheck can be enough to send their lives into free fall.

When Carolyn Steptoe lost her job at a D.C. law firm in July 2024, she was optimistic her savings would be enough to cover the roughly $2,600 rent on the two-bedroom apartment she moved into after her home of 20 years faced foreclosure.

By fall, her savings (and her retirement) had run dry. Steptoe, who is in her mid-60s, applied for help through the city’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), which provides short-term aid to tenants behind on rent. The program covered about three months of unpaid rent, buying her some time. But by early 2025, still without a job, she fell behind again. Over the next six months she accrued more than $10,000 in arrears — debt her landlord is now using to try to evict her.

“You do the best you can because you’re living in D.C., where economic disparity is rampant and housing is very expensive,” she says, calling the District “a tale of two cities.”

And she isn’t far off base. A 2022 Brookings Institution report found that white households in D.C. earned a median income more than three times higher than Black households. The study also found a $156,000 gap in median home values between white and Black residents, and that Black renters were nearly twice as likely to spend over 30% of their income on housing. 

In fiscal year 2024, half of all evictions occurred in majority-Black Wards 7 and 8, according to city data. Those wards account for about a quarter of the city’s renters. 

Tenants there are far more likely to spend more than half of their income on rent, according to a 2018 report on evictions in the District by Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. A separate Urban Institute analysis published in 2023 found that these inequities stem from decades of disinvestment and discriminatory housing policies that have left Black residents disproportionately vulnerable to eviction and displacement.

But it’s not just lower-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia that are seeing a spike in evictions. Wealthier, majority-white wards have experienced some of the steepest increases in evictions — albeit from a much lower baseline.

In 2024, completed evictions surpassed pre-pandemic levels in every ward except Ward 4 — and the sharpest jumps came in neighborhoods that typically see the fewest cases, according to data obtained and analyzed by Street Sense, The 51st, and IRW. 

Compared to 2019, Ward 1 saw a 41% increase, Ward 2 was up 90%, Ward 3 rose 88%, and Ward 6 climbed 83%. By contrast, wards that already had the city’s highest eviction totals — 5, 7, and 8 — saw much smaller increases, ranging from 7% to 33%.

Through the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, which runs from fall 2024 to fall 2025, that trend has continued. Wards 1 through 4 and 6 have already logged more completed evictions than before the pandemic, with Ward 3 seeing the sharpest rise — up 73% compared to 2019. Meanwhile, Wards 5, 7, and 8, which usually see the highest volume of evictions, have so far remained below pre-pandemic levels, though that could change once fourth-quarter data are released.

Though the exact cause of the rise in filings in neighborhoods that previously saw few evictions are unclear, advocates say they could be linked to several factors, such as the end of pandemic-era assistance, rising rents, and landlords relying more on court filings to recover unpaid rent. 

Fighting for scarce aid

The rise in evictions has unfolded against the backdrop of a defunding of rental relief aid programs and weakening tenant protections that once acted as a backstop to keep people from losing their homes.

During the pandemic, federal relief through the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan allowed the District to expand the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Before COVID, the program served only a few thousand households a year on a budget of less than $8 million. But between 2020 and 2022, federal aid pushed that number into the tens of millions, helping thousands of residents stay housed. Combined with the city’s eviction moratorium, it prevented a wave of removals.

When the moratorium lifted, landlords began filing cases that had been on hold during the pandemic. At first, ERAP and other federal relief programs helped blunt the impact, with more than $60 million available at the program’s peak in 2023. But as that federal money ran out, the city did not replace it. By fiscal year 2024, ERAP funding had fallen to $27 million. This fiscal year, just $8.6 million is budgeted. 

When the city reopened applications last November, residents requested more than $20 million in rent relief within six hours, exhausting the year’s funding almost immediately. ERAP has not opened for applications yet this year.

“I am really bracing for this new fiscal year, because that $8.6 million is going to go like the speed of light,” says Amanda Korber, managing attorney for D.C. Legal Aid’s housing unit. “I think it’s gonna get ugly, and I think it’s gonna get ugly fast.” 

While the city shrank the emergency rent assistance, it also began rolling back pandemic-era tenant protections for applicants. Earlier versions of ERAP required judges to automatically pause eviction cases when tenants had a pending application. But under changes approved last year, it’s now up to judges to decide whether to delay a case. The law also added new documentation requirements for tenants and narrowed what qualifies as an “emergency situation,” making it harder for some applicants to be approved.

Supporters of the legislation say it is meant to help landlords recover unpaid rent faster by making the eviction process more efficient, citing concerns from property owners and lobbyists who argue that cases can sometimes take a year or longer to resolve.

“This is a big problem, because the housing provider isn’t getting any money. They’re basically renting the unit for free,” Alex Rossello, the director of policy communications for AOBA, a local real estate industry group, told Street Sense/The 51st. “If you have a number of these in a building that heavily hits the finances of the building.”

A rollback of tenant protections

The rollback of those protections culminated this year in the most significant overhaul of the city’s eviction process in years – the RENTAL Act.

The law, passed Sept. 17, includes several provisions housing attorneys say will significantly impact tenants. These include shortening the notice landlords must give tenants before filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent from 30 days to 15, removing the requirement to include rent ledgers and payment histories with filings, and giving judges greater discretion over whether to pause cases when tenants have a pending rental assistance application.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that pretty much every single eviction procedure related provision of the [RENTAL] Act would tend to make it easier for a landlord to evict their tenant,” says Adam Marshall, housing managing attorney for the Family Preservation Project at the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, which is funded by the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.

When she proposed the legislation in February, Mayor Muriel Bowser pointed to applications for up to $144 million in housing preservation funding — requests from 69 affordable housing projects seeking bridge and gap financing to cover operating costs, repairs, and debt — as evidence that many property owners were struggling to keep nearly 8,000 affordable units from falling into distress.

“We basically created a system that in large part still persists that burdens housing providers and renters with outlandish levels of rental debt,” says Rossello.

Data from the D.C. Housing Finance Agency found that tenants owed more than $21.5 million in back rent in 2024 across 105 properties financed or monitored by the agency. Delinquency rates were highest in Wards 7 and 8, the wards with the highest eviction levels.

The data shows a steady rise in delinquencies since before the pandemic, climbing from $3.7 million in 2019 to $13.5 million in 2024.

“As you can see from the underwriting assumptions, this is unsustainable for normal operations,” a spokesperson for the housing finance agency told Street Sense/The 51st.

The RENTAL Act is supposed to stop that rise. But Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George says she worries it will only deepen the problem by pushing more residents into instability at a time when the city’s safety net is already fraying. She argued faster filings and shorter notice periods may help landlords recover unpaid rent more quickly, but at the cost of displacing families who are already struggling to stay afloat amid low wages, rising rents, and gaps in social support.

“I ultimately voted against the RENTAL Act because I reject the premise that evicting our residents is the only way to stabilize affordable housing providers,” she says. “We cannot displace our way to an equitable D.C.”

Beyond band-aid solutions

Lewis George’s concerns reflect what many housing advocates have been warning for months: without stronger protections and long-term solutions, the District’s eviction system will continue to punish residents who fall behind for reasons largely beyond their control.

But advocates stress that the current trajectory is not inevitable. They point to steps city leaders could take to blunt the crisis, including restoring ERAP funding, expanding subsidies, and strengthening right-to-counsel programs so tenants have free access to legal help in court.

The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute says the city would need to commit at least $100 million a year to ERAP alone to prevent mass displacement. But even that level of investment would only address part of the problem. The deeper issue, advocates say, is the lack of affordable housing.

“We need to be funding ERAP because… It’s really the only tool for people facing eviction, but we also need to be investing in affordable housing so people aren’t in a position of needing ERAP to begin with,” says Kate Coventry, the deputy director of Legislative Strategy for the policy institute.

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, who also voted against the RENTAL Act, says ERAP was never designed to be a long-term fix for D.C.’s housing crisis.

“ERAP is meant to be an eviction prevention tool in the simplest sense,” Nadeau told Street Sense/The 51st. “It’s not supposed to be something you go back to every year. It’s supposed to be for when something goes wrong.”

Leah Hendey, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, says the District’s housing market lacks both “deep subsidies,” which cap rent at 30% of a household’s income, and “shallow subsidies,” which provide smaller, time-limited offsets to help households just above the poverty line manage rent. Without both layers, families are left paying rents that far exceed what they can afford, with no buffer for emergencies.

Her team’s 2024 analysis estimated D.C. would need an additional $380 million annually for deep subsidies, $153 million for shallow subsidies, and $76 to $108 million for ERAP to meet the scale of need. Even if ERAP were fully funded, she noted, it cannot substitute for long-term affordability. “We don’t have enough money in the system for housing assistance, and the rent is too high for many households in the District to afford,” she says.

Nadeau says the city needs to address deeper structural problems, including stagnant wages and the shortage of affordable housing. She pointed to D.C.’s Housing Production Trust Fund — the city’s main tool for financing new affordable housing — as an example of how local investments have fallen short. While the fund helps developers build or preserve income-restricted units, Nadeau says it hasn’t produced enough deeply affordable housing for the residents most at risk of eviction.

“None of it’s enough,” she says.

Advocates argue that failing to act will cost more in the long run. They warn that shortfalls in housing assistance will mean more families pushed into homelessness, a heavier strain on shelters and emergency rooms, and deeper inequities in who gets to remain in the city.

“A person’s home or housing forms the base of any type of success that person will experience,” says Natasha Bennett, managing attorney at Bread for the City. 

Fighting to stay housed

Without these interventions, tenant attorneys argue, more families will be displaced, not because they choose not to pay rent but because the systems meant to keep them housed are underfunded and riddled with barriers. The result is more residents living on the edge — one paycheck, one medical bill, or one missed paperwork deadline away from losing their homes.

Zoila, a single mother of three living in Ward 4, earns about $2,000 a month cleaning homes — less than rent for her two-bedroom apartment, which costs $2,375. She says her problems began soon after moving in, when she discovered severe mold that damaged her furniture and clothes. Despite repeated complaints, she says the landlord painted over the problem rather than fixing it.

“They knew about these bad conditions,” Zoila, who asked to use only her first name for fear of retaliation, says through a translator. “I never thought they would take me to court because they knew about the bad conditions.”

She says she had to stop paying rent temporarily after spending much of her limited income replacing her family’s furniture, which had been ruined by mold. In D.C., landlords must follow housing code standards, and if they don’t, a tenant may be legally entitled to a rent reduction.

But when the landlord later sued her for nonpayment, the judge ordered her to pay rent into the court while repairs continued. Zoila was ultimately able to avoid eviction. But housing advocates worry that when the eviction process is sped up and less assistance is available to insulate tenants on the edge, renters like Zoila and Steptoe will have fewer avenues to protect themselves.

Steptoe landed a new job in July as a paralegal at a Reston law firm that pays six figures, but she’s still trying to catch up. She now pays about $1,500 a month into the court under what’s known as a protective order while her case moves through D.C. Superior Court. She’s hopeful it will be dismissed, saying she’s gathered evidence that her building’s management has violated D.C. housing codes, which would give her justification for withholding some rent. More than that, she says, she’s fighting to show her neighbors — many of whom are on fixed incomes or have lost work themselves — that they don’t have to give in and leave their home if they fall behind.

“No one wants to be homeless,” she says.

Zoila told Street Sense/The 51st that she no longer owes rent but lives with constant uncertainty as winter approaches, when mold problems worsen. She says she’s afraid to apply for ERAP again, worried it could trigger another court case.

 “I’m thinking of finding a second job, but my life is very hard with my kids,” she says.“I want to pay my rent. I know it’s my responsibility,” she added. “But I’ve suffered with these conditions, and it feels like there’s no help. Every year the rent goes up, and people here barely make enough to eat.”

In the fall of 2021, residents at Urban Village Apartments in Columbia Heights found themselves in a “love bubble” with a well-connected developer making big promises.

Their 72-unit garden-style affordable apartment community was up for sale, and, by virtue of their rights under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA, the residents were considering potential buyers.

Omar Karim, one of the developers who would eventually purchase the apartment community, proposed a “20% equity partner in ownership” with the tenant association. The promises were formalized in a development agreement that also gave tenants 20 percent of all financial benefits, continued affordability, and expanded programs.

“We’re co-owners on this thing,” Karim excitedly declared in an audio recording of a conversation with tenants. “We’re gonna get some shirts. Hashtag, we’re free, hashtag, we’re owners.”

Renee Flood-Wright, the tenant association’s vice president, says Karim “talked about where he comes from: poor, from Detroit, buying $5 shoes. That’s what he sold us on. … He talked a lot about community empowerment and how he wanted to create homes that are affordable that look like anybody else’s home.

“Imagine someone just telling you any- and everything you want to hear,” she adds. “He really gained our trust that way.”

Urban Village was a vibrant community, Flood-Wright says. Under previous owner Somerset Development Company, it was a hub of dynamic community life and offered a range of programs and initiatives, including summer camps, senior programs, and a decade-long “feed the community” project. But starting in 2022, after Karim and his well-connected partner, Buwa Binitie, acquired the community for about $20 million, programs were shuttered and the buildings started to decline.

After just three years under Karim and Binitie’s ownership, tenants accuse the two of neglect and mismanagement. Despite Karim’s initial pledges, evidence from contracts, public records, interviews, and audio recordings reveal neglected maintenance and shuttered initiatives. Tenants say the developers are trying to drastically reduce their promised equity in the property and are seeking to force them out of their homes. The property is now being monitored by the DC Department of Housing and Community Development for noncompliance with affordable housing requirements. 

The broken promises have shattered the tenants’ faith, Flood-Wright says, leaving them with a hard realization about Karim. “He love-bombed us,” she says.

But even before Karim and Binitie acquired the building and, tenants say, let it fall into disrepair, the deal drew suspicions from the previous owner that Binitie improperly used his access to confidential information he’d received as chair of a powerful housing board.

Concerns about potential conflicts from the start  

Controversy plagued the Urban Village acquisition from the start. In 2019, Somerset was seeking tax credits from the DC Housing Finance Agency for its own planned redevelopment of the property. Binitie served as chair of the agency’s board at the time, and through that role had access to Somerset’s otherwise confidential financial data provided through its application.

Two years later, Somerset initiated the sale process, hoping to reacquire the property via a new entity. The sale triggered tenants’ TOPA rights that allow them to have a say in who purchased the property and under what conditions.

But when tenants became interested in working with Binitie’s company, Dantes Partners, in the summer of 2021, Somerset’s co-founding principal James Campbell grew suspicious.

“We had submitted all the documentation, all of our proprietary information … personal financials, and the project proformas, of how we thought it could work, and it was available to all the board members,” Campbell says in an interview with City Paper, describing Somerset’s meeting with the DCHFA board in 2019.

“We did express concern to the DCHFA board about the apparent conflict of interest,” he says.

Binitie says he stepped away from the deal after a complaint was filed with DCHFA. But he returned to the ownership group after the agency’s investigation found no wrongdoing, he says.

But a spokesperson for DCHFA says the agency did not conduct the investigation. The Board of Ethics and Government Accountability lists a case involving “allegations of post-employment violation” by the former DCHFA chair; the case was “dismissed for lack of evidence,” according to BEGA’s quarterly report. (Binitie resigned from the DCHFA board in 2022.)

Campbell highlights the ethical issue at stake when developers play musical chairs on regulatory boards. “That a developer who’s active in the business should be on any of these decision-making bodies … it’s just not appropriate,” he says.

While Binitie was away from the project, Karim took the lead on negotiating the development agreement with tenants. During those talks, Karim assured Flood-Wright and tenant association president Apolonia Lopez that Binitie was not involved, according to the two tenant association leaders.

The approximately $20 million loan Binitie and Karim secured through their LLC to acquire the property came from City First Bank, where Binitie previously served on the board from at least 2019, as indicated by a Dantes Partners brochure. He was no longer a member by January 2022, but it is unclear when he left. This loan accounted for 2.6 percent of City First Bank’s $768 million in total loans, according to the financial institution’s 2022 impact report, retrieved from the Internet Archive.

A legacy betrayed 

Urban Village tenants’ initial optimism with Karim and Binitie quickly turned into feelings of betrayal.

Many of the tenants have lifelong connections to Urban Village. Lopez grew up there and attended tutoring sessions at the neighboring St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church. Flood-Wright has known Lopez for most of her life and the two raised children together in the apartment community. The sewing machine that once belonged to Lopez’s grandmother sits in the community center. 

Despite a $50,000 buyout offer for tenants to leave permanently, the majority initially chose to return to Urban Village after redevelopment, according to Lopez.

The church’s commitment to social justice was the catalyst for the development of Urban Village, prompted by parishioner George Hart, who said during a Sunday sermon in 1969 that “St. Stephen’s Church can be free only when it humbles itself before its own God and divests itself of its ideology that places property above people and goods above God.”

The church donated approximately one-third of its land for the construction of the affordable housing complex in the 1970s as reparations. 

Years later, Somerset’s 2002 purchase guaranteed that Urban Village would remain affordable for at least 25 years. Even though Somerset lost the property to Binitie and Karim in 2022, the firm entered into a private covenant with the new owners on its way out. The agreement requires 72 units in the redevelopment remain affordable “in perpetuity.” (The redevelopment plan includes nearly 300 units.)

Isaiah Poole, board member of the Urban Village Corporation—a nonprofit established in the 1970s to monitor affordability at Urban Village—highlights the property’s role as a “crown jewel” of Columbia Heights.

“People should live in clean, dignified spaces that respect their humanity,” Poole says. “And when you provide those kinds of spaces, people rise to that. Urban Village modeled that for a long, long time.”

Poole’s early interactions with Karim initially gave him confidence. But now, reflecting on the three-year saga, Poole says Urban Village tenants have learned a lesson: 

“Developers are who developers are, and there are some developers who are better than others,” he says. “But this is like inviting lions to be house pets. Even if they happen to behave themselves some of the time, at some point, they’re going to do what lions do, and try to eat you.”

‘Rodents and mold require rent’

Binitie not only co-owns Urban Village, he also manages it through his company Faria Management.

Just a few months after Faria Management took over in 2022, tenants circulated a petition calling for Faria’s removal. The complex had “degraded terribly” under Faria’s watch, the petition says, and had become riddled with rodent and roach infestations. Mold had been “allowed to grow like an experiment in a petri dish,” and was so pervasive in one building that the stench was immediately noticeable upon entering, the tenants wrote.

“We are at our limit and have lost all confidence that your group will carry out any of the promises made,” the petition says.

By March 2023, DC Water placed a lien on the property for $13,784 in unpaid water bills, according to a filing with the Recorder of Deeds.

“You have Black developers who have decided that the people and the community do not matter,” Flood-Wright says. “This land is for families. We have multiple generations. It’s history here, and they have desecrated it.”

Now, almost three years after tenants circulated the petition, they continue to raise the same issues to the developers. During a meeting in July, in the midst of dangerous, record-breaking heat, a distraught mother questioned Binitie and Karim about why her air-conditioning had not been repaired for a month despite multiple requests. The DC Department of Buildings cited the developers’ LLC this summer for failing to maintain HVAC or electrical facilities in four units.

The persistent issues at Urban Village conflict with Karim’s alluring promises.

“I care about the village like I care about my own home,” Karim told Flood-Wright, according to a recording of the conversation. “We are a partnership. … I’m not a slumlord, I’m not a slum partner. I’m not going to lie or cheat or steal or shortcut anything. I don’t live that wild life.”

Binitie, for his part, denies that the conditions are the result of his company’s management, and says the property was “decrepit” when he acquired it, an assertion tenants strongly dispute.

“I can’t speak to very early on. I can only speak to the right now because right now is what we are all living today,” Binitie says in an interview with City Paper, sidestepping questions about the origin of what tenants say are deplorable conditions at Urban Village. He instead steers the conversation toward the current state of the property and the amount of rent he says has not been paid.

“Rodents and mold require rent,” he says.

Binitie says their lender provided funds for initial repairs, which were completed. “We walked every single unit at the time, and we addressed every single one of those units,” Binitie says. But with limited resources, Binitie says things have gotten worse.

The development agreement with the tenant association requires 24/7 on-site property management, 12-hour daily security, and monthly pest control. It also gives tenants the authority to request the removal of the property manager. Tenants say Faria has failed to fulfill its promises and the conditions continue to degrade under Binitie’s management, but Binitie says he doesn’t intend to honor the provision allowing tenants to request removal.

“I think I have the full right and authority to decide who provides services for property that I have a guarantee on,” Binitie says, adding that anyone willing to replace him as guarantor is welcome to bring in a new management company. Asked why they included the provision in the development agreement in the first place, Binitie says: “I think those are one of the things that no one ever foresaw.”

Faria’s alleged shortcomings extend beyond the conditions at Urban Village. Court filings and public records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal allegations of mismanagement and noncompliance with the District’s affordable housing programs.

DHCD found Faria’s recordkeeping so poor that Urban Village was placed on its compliance watch list in June. The action signals a serious violation that could lead to the loss of millions of dollars in tax credits and jeopardize a project’s financial viability.

DHCD found “plenty of deficiencies” in its fiscal year 2025 audit of Urban Village’s low-income housing tax credit compliance, according to a June email to Linda Edmundson, Faria’s director of compliance. 

The email details key lapses, including Faria’s failure to self-audit files before the agency’s review and noncompliance with annual recertifications, a process of confirming that tenants in low-income housing still qualify to live there. The DHCD review notes that Faria’s recertification documents for 2024 were not signed until May 2025 and that legally required notices about upcoming recertification deadlines that Faria claimed to have sent to tenants were undated. 

Binitie at first denied that the Urban Village project is on DHCD’s watch list, telling City Paper: “Why don’t you call the city and ask them if we’re still on the watch list?”  

Only after City Paper pointed out that Faria failed to file recertifications at all in 2024, according to DHCD, did Binitie admit they expected to start construction and “opted not to comply at the time.”

DHCD spokesperson Tim Wilson confirms Urban Village remains on the watch list. 

Faria has also faced accusations of internal dysfunction. The company’s former president, Monique Lilly-Moore, in a 2024 deposition, described Faria as a deeply troubled “failing start-up.” (Lilly-Moore lost her legal dispute with Faria over compensation in 2024.)

Compliance administrators threatened to pull tax credits or impose outside management due to Faria’s mismanagement, according to Lilly-Moore—significant enforcement tools for projects receiving government funding. She alleged that one lender, Wells Fargo, grew particularly apprehensive about new deals due to Faria’s persistent poor management over the preceding four years, according to her deposition in the lawsuit.

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau has witnessed Urban Village’s transformation, from its thriving heyday under Somerset to its current dilapidated state. On a visit last month, Nadeau says she observed overgrown landscaping and several units with damaged bathrooms, nonfunctional air-conditioning, and mold.

“It’s really shocking to see the difference between those days and what’s going on at the property now,” Nadeau says. “We have families and seniors living in these properties, and we need them, especially our affordable properties, to be held to the highest standards.”

The noticeable deterioration has led Poole to question the developers’ intentions: “This looks like the classic developer play of ‘let’s make conditions untenable for the tenants so that they will leave.’”

A new deal?

Since last summer, developers Binitie and Karim have sought to amend the development agreement signed when they initially acquired the building that gives tenants a 20 percent ownership stake—a key factor in their decision to allow the sale to the developers in the first place.

The original agreement guaranteed tenants relocation services, buyout payments, and 20 percent of all financial benefits from the entire project. But tenants now believe the developers are trying to dilute their promised ownership stake.

Amendments proposed by Binitie and Karim drastically reduce the tenants’ effective ownership to a mere 0.002 percent (20 percent of a 0.01 percent stake), relegating them to passive investors with virtually no benefits. This dilution became clear to tenants only last month when they received the operating agreement and an organizational chart outlining a multi-LLC ownership structure. In this structure, the tenant association owns 20 percent of Urban Village Community Partners LLC, which owns 49 percent of 3401 16th Street MM LLC, which in turn owns only 0.01 percent of the final ownership LLC.

The new proposal contradicts Karim’s initial promises in an email, which was shared with City Paper. In his pitch, Karim swayed tenants toward a mixed-income property rather than a 100 percent affordable development and emphasized “wealth creation for the 70 current tenants” as a crucial factor in their partnership decision.

As recently as last July, even with the project still planned as mixed-income, the developers proposed an amendment that would significantly limit tenant financial benefits. This amendment would have restricted their direct 20 percent share just to the affordable housing units and implemented an unfavorable profit-sharing structure for market units, drastically reducing potential returns compared to the original agreement.

Despite a projected $17.36 million developer fee, according to a 2025 presentation, the promised financial benefits for tenants may be largely unrealized. Developer cash flow projections indicate profits would not materialize until year 15, amounting to approximately $212,000, which means less than $700 for each family at Urban Village, Binitie confirms.

Binitie says the ownership structure, where the developer owns 1 percent or less of the property, is typical for a deal using Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, or LIHTC, something Binitie says they’ve tried to explain to tenants. He adds that the amendment also offered tenants a share of the developer fee. But the pivot to a LIHTC deal came long after the tenants signed over their TOPA rights, giving Binitie and Karim ownership of Urban Village, according to tenant association board members and emails reviewed by City Paper. 

This spring, Binitie and Karim blamed the financial strain on tenants’ alleged failure to pay more than $300,000 in rent. The situation was so dire that they claimed they couldn’t even afford a translator for a community meeting, forcing Lopez to translate for Spanish-speaking residents, according to a recording of the meeting.

At other meetings, Karim has blamed the rental arrearages on the former owner’s “bad data,” a claim Campbell, of Somerset, vehemently denies. Karim has also praised the tenants, stating, “residents pay their rent, thankfully, at Urban Village. You all are doing an amazing job with this.”

Binitie specifically blamed the rental arrearages on the D.C. Housing Authority’s termination of tenant vouchers. But one tenant tells City Paper they contacted DCHA and were informed that the issue stemmed from Faria’s failure to submit necessary paperwork.

In an interview, Binitie says rental arrearages have reached $450,000, asserting many tenants “refused to engage with the housing authority,” leading DCHA to withhold back rent for those who failed to recertify.

Tenants dispute the narrative, saying they received confusing and last-minute notices to attend DCHA briefings. One notice, for instance, provided no information about its origin or purpose, threatening that if tenants arrive late, “you will not be admitted and will be placed at the bottom of the list.”

DCHA spokesperson Alison Burdo says Urban Village’s owner notified the housing authority in June of the impending redevelopment that would require resident relocation, and requested DCHA host on-site transfer briefings.

Burdo says the agency’s records show no outstanding voucher payments owed to the landlord. Generally, she adds, DCHA initiates voucher payments only after all necessary eligibility and lease-up paperwork has been finalized. Landlords are responsible for submitting those materials, according to DCHA’s instructions posted online.

In August, tenants overwhelmingly rejected the proposed amendments to the development agreement. Soon after, they received a barrage of notices, including rent hikes, an Aug. 20 notice claiming asbestos abatement, and an Aug. 22 notice to vacate by Sept. 30 for redevelopment.

Binitie says that the developers will honor the development agreement. But, he adds, “let’s not misconstrue, they don’t own anything right now. They will own it, should we close. If we don’t close, there’s nothing to own.” He’s referring to his belief that he and Karim need to close on construction financing, which is not a condition of tenants’ ownership spelled out in the development agreement.

Despite the disappointment and uncertainty, the journey for the tenants at Urban Village has also been marked with solidarity. As the future of Urban Village remains at risk, Nadeau hopes the agreement signed with the tenant association is “honored completely and that every tenant gets to return to a beautiful and dignified unit right where they want to live.”

“Anything less than that is a breach of contract and makes a mockery of the TOPA process,” she says.

Flood-Wright, for her part, sees her current struggle as symbolic of the city’s top leadership:

“I’m born and raised in the city, and whoever is leading the city is going to set the tone and flavor,” she says. “The mayor, we don’t see her. The woman who is leading the city is sequestered … far from real life. … She’s leading the city running after the dollar bill.” 

Developers are simply following suit, she says.

As the D.C. Council is set to vote on the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords (RENTAL) Act, a sweeping housing law reform bill with far-reaching implications for District tenants, recent studies and reports illustrate the sharp divide between reliable data and the narrative promoted by industry-backed advocacy groups.

The bill, praised by developer groups and introduced by Mayor Muriel Bowser, has raised concerns among tenants, housing advocates, and some affordable housing providers, who argue it would eliminate tenant protections based on little reliable data. 

Of particular concern are changes to eviction due process safeguards and the proposed exemptions to the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, a 40-year-old law that gives tenants the right of first refusal when their building is put up for sale.

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau says she’s aware of “a cadre of developers who have wanted to take down TOPA for more than a decade. They’re using this opportunity to do it by blaming TOPA for everything. And it’s just not logical.” 

Nadeau’s staff says she has been working with Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and Council Chair Phil Mendelson on an amendment to the RENTAL Act that would eliminate the exemption for buildings with affordability covenants that require rents to remain at certain levels. It would also reinstate a cooling-off period to prevent tenants from prematurely assigning their TOPA rights and would remove the provision on tenant buyouts.

Nadeau expects to introduce the amendment during the D.C. Council’s meeting Wednesday, when lawmakers will take the second and final vote on the bill. 

In the week or so leading up to the meeting, reports from both sides of the debate have started circulating; one touts the benefits of TOPA while the other pushes for harsher eviction reforms claiming landlords have $1 billion in rental arrearages.

A working paper from researchers at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, housed at the University of Maryland, College Park, describes TOPA as an instrumental law preserving affordability while identifying the potential harm of the RENTAL Act, especially for low-income Black tenants.

The UMD researchers created a comprehensive database by compiling D.C.’s TOPA reports of filings, citywide building data, census information, with qualitative details from local tenant groups. (Landlords must file TOPA documents with D.C. and the government publishes weekly reports of those filings.)

The study found that TOPA “was highly effective at preserving affordable housing, particularly in areas where rents were rising,” but the law has been less effective in areas with limited affordability or near public transit stations where market-rate buildings are more common.

TOPA is a crucial tool for market access and affordable housing preservation, serving as an “early warning system” for anti-displacement efforts, according to the UMD study.

Kathryn Howell, director of UMD’s Center for Smart Growth, Research, and Education and one of the study’s authors, said in a previous interview that while some high-profile individuals may have had negative experiences with TOPA, making policy decisions based on a few anecdotal experiences is problematic. 

Peter Tatian, a research director and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, questions the sudden focus on TOPA as the cause of potential disinvestment in D.C. “What has changed to make it a perceived problem today when it wasn’t previously?” he asks. “What are all the possible explanations?”

The UMD study stands in sharp contrast to a “Rent Loss Study” from the Small Multifamily Owners Association, a landlord advocacy group. SMOA’s three-page report, which was released last week, claims landlords have lost an astonishing $1 billion in unpaid rent since the end of the pandemic and pushes for the restoration of harsher eviction provisions that were removed from the initial version of the RENTAL Act.

SMOA’s study uses data from a specific, distressed subset of the rental market—the DC Housing Finance Agency’s struggling affordable housing portfolio—and extrapolates it to come to a conclusion about the entire rental market. The report uses similarly questionable methodology for rent delinquency rates, drawing from unnamed affordable housing providers and applying their rental arrearages to the entire rental market. 

“The ‘study,’ which feels like a very loose term, doesn’t cite any of its data (beyond the number of apartment units in D.C., which isn’t the most recent number from the 2024 [American Community Survey],” says Mychal Cohen, a senior policy analyst for the left-leaning DC Fiscal Policy Institute, of the SMOA report. “That is a big red flag.”

Cohen says there are several methodological flaws, including a lack of transparency around the report’s underlying data, and erroneously using one unique subset of the rental housing market to make conclusions about every rental unit in D.C.

Hunter defends his methodology, saying in an interview that his data comes from DCHFA and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. 

“I didn’t make those numbers up,” he says. “That subset is a very small subset of the entire rental population. If you take that small amount of money, which is not even looking at the entire rent, and stretch it out, it’s actually over a billion dollars,” he says, adding that the figure is “a conservative estimate.” 

The identity of the “small landlords” SMOA purports to represent remains ambiguous. An attendee list from a SMOA event in 2023 primarily featured representatives from trade groups, banks, property managers, and large landlords, including Nigel Crayton, director at Greysteel, Katalin Peter, vice president of government affairs for the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington, and Dan Crosby, a property manager whose tenants have complained about squalid conditions for years. 

The answers don’t get clearer on SMOA’s website. In a glowing testimonial, a landlord identified as Adam Shaw raved that SMOA’s “advocacy against unfair housing policies and their relentless fight for our rights have given me a voice in a system that often overlooks small property owners.” Three other five-star reviews, purportedly from landlords who worked with SMOA, also appear at the bottom of its website.

But the same four reviewers, using different names but the same photos, appear on the site for a Slovakian clothing store, where the photo for Shaw appears next to the name Peter Novak. 

“The dress is gorgeous and created an unforgettable experience for my wife!” Novak proclaimed.

The Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule in 2024 banning the use of fake online reviews, which, according to former Chair Lina Khan, “not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors.” 

Dean Hunter, SMOA’s founder, has praised the RENTAL Act, stating the law “correctly exempts many providers, especially small apartment building owners, from burdensome TOPA requirements [that] have caused harm.” Hunter, a former attorney, pleaded guilty in 2013 to stealing settlement money from disability and personal injury clients in a scheme that cost victims more than $100,000.

As recently as 2018, Hunter held a different view on TOPA as executive director of the Civil Rights Center. He actively campaigned against eliminating TOPA rights for renters in single-family homes and circulated a flyer that warned the proposed bill would “cause thousands of families and seniors to be displaced from their homes” and called it a “major gentrification land grab.”

Adding to the landscape of questionable data, the dark money group Opportunity DC has cited its own poll results that say 62 percent of D.C. voters support the RENTAL Act. The poll’s methodology reveals that the questions themselves could introduce bias in the responses. 

The poll asks, for example, whether respondents support or oppose “Streamlin[ing] the permitting process for new housing construction, in order to speed up the building of new housing?” and “mak[ing] it easier to sell buildings, in order to help attract more investment in new housing.”

The survey also asks if respondents believe D.C. should “Modernize regulations from 1980, like the Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), which currently deter new housing production.” 

And the final question says: “DC’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) was created 45 years ago to give renters the chance to buy their apartment when their building was sold. But now it is being misused, causing long delays in property sales and slowing down construction of new and affordable housing. The RENTAL Act updates TOPA to exclude buildings with DC residents who make more money, while making sure that lower-income renters are not forced to move. Do you support updating TOPA so it works the way it was intended?”

Tatian, with the Urban Institute, says that “asking leading questions, those that intentionally or unintentionally prompt someone to give a particular response, is not best practice for data collection, as it can lead to biased results.”

Opportunity DC has recently launched anti-TOPA ads on social media to promote the RENTAL Act. Malcom Fox, the group’s executive director, tells City Paper that TOPA “commonly extends the transaction by multiple years.”

But when asked whether delays could be attributed to TOPA tolling—the almost two-year period in 2020 when the D.C. Council froze deadlines imposed during the TOPA process that caused significant delays in building sales—Fox was unaware. “By tolling period, you mean the process of forming the tenant association, going back and forth in negotiations?” he asked.

Evidence of developers’ behind-the-scenes influence on Opportunity DC’s messaging can be seen in a 2023 email from board member and developer Jair Lynch, who has advocated for the sort of TOPA exemptions in the bill.

Lynch’s email sent to the “Developer Roundtable” requested $4,000 from each member to support Opportunity DC’s “vital work,” including polling, coordinated messaging, and a  “public safety advocacy campaign.”

Lynch noted in the email that “ODC is a 501c4, which means that contributions are not publicly disclosed.” A new public finance law “prohibits donations to Councilmembers and candidates from any entity that has or is seeking a contract or grant (including TIFs & abatements) with a cumulative value of $250,000 or greater,” Lynch wrote. That means “ODC represents the sole vehicle for employers to use their voice and financially impact local elections.” 

City Paper sent an email to an address associated with the Developer Roundtable asking to interview members about their experience with TOPA. Chris Bruch, president and CEO of the Donohoe Companies Inc., and Taylor Lawch, executive vice president and co-head of development at JBG Smith, were the only ones to respond. Bruch says he has not done a TOPA deal recently. Lawsch responded by cc’ing Evan Regan-Levine, who according to Lawsch, “has spent a lot of time studying this topic and discussing with the various stakeholders.” But Regan-Levine never responded. 

The environment where data can be shaped for a particular agenda highlights the concerns of experts like Gary Langer, former director of polling at ABC News. 

“There are all sorts of data that’s around us, and some of it is independently produced to honestly and neutrally assess public attitudes or behavior on a given issue,” Langer says. “But other data can be produced for other purposes, to try to promote somebody’s preferred policy or agenda.”

While industry-funded research can produce high-quality, unbiased data, Langer cautions that “if the funder of a given research project has a dog in a fight, then we should be on guard about the possibility of manipulated data produced to promote their agenda or point of view.

“We all swim in a sea of data, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of pollution in the water,” Langer says.