The tenants knew something was up when the live-in maintenance man was kicked out.
But it wasn't until someone slipped a couple of letters under an apartment door that the tenants learned that their apartment building had been sold and that their rights to buy their units had vanished. Their landlord had crafted the sale to avoid triggering a District law that gives tenants the right to purchase their buildings.
Retiree Ardis Clark has lived in her MacArthur Boulevard apartment building for 31 years. "I want to stay here," she says. "Everything is here for me."
(Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
|
|
Now they have united to regain what they lost and to avoid an uncertain future.
"It's just devastating to me to think about," said Ardis Clark, 80, a retired dental assistant who has made the building at 4840 MacArthur Blvd. NW her home for 31 years. She shops at the Safeway across the street and takes the bus to volunteer at Sibley Hospital. "I want to stay here. Everything is here for me."
For others, the transaction means the loss of possible homeownership, a goal that is increasingly out of reach for many working-class and middle-class District residents.
"This is the only possibility for me to buy in the District of Columbia," said tenant Rick Singleton, 41, an artist. "It would give you the luxury of owning your own place and knowing no one is going to snatch it out from under you."
The city's booming real estate market is creating opportunities for thousands, but many longtime renters say they are being battered by market forces, landlords and their attorneys and city regulators. At risk are their longtime apartments, their rights and their peace of mind.
Today, the D.C. Council is scheduled to consider legislation that would close a loophole that has allowed building owners to get around a law that gives tenants the right of first refusal when their buildings are for sale. Previous legislative efforts have failed.
Another bill proposes extending the city's tough rent-control laws for another five years.
Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), chairman of the Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Committee and the bills' author, said the council wants to strengthen tenant rights and maintain economically diverse neighborhoods.
Landlords have sold hundreds of buildings using a so-called 95-5 transaction, which allows them to sell 95 percent of a building with the understanding that the other 5 percent will be transferred later. Such sales do not trigger the tenant-purchase option, city regulators say.
"What we're trying to do is correct an abuse of tenants' rights, not just a legal technicality," Graham said. "In effect, these landlords have repealed the tenants' opportunity-to-purchase law."
But Vincent Policy, a lawyer with Greenstein DeLorme & Luchs, a firm that is involved in many of the 95-5 deals, said the procedure is legal and is used to speed up transactions and avoid small groups of tenants who use the law "to extort money [from owners] without any intent to buy the building."
In the sale of 4840 MacArthur Blvd., the seller and buyer executed a deal in which 50 percent of the building was sold while the price for another 45 percent was given to the seller as a loan payable in a year. If the loan is not repaid by the end of this month, 95 percent of the interest in the building would be transferred to the new owners.
