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.