Rent Control Bill Approved

Measure Would Tie Fees to Comparable Market Value

The District's decades-old rent control system would be overhauled if legislation approved yesterday by a D.C. Council committee becomes law.

The Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs voted 4 to 1 to do away with a system based on a rental unit's "rent ceiling" and implement one calculated more in relation to comparable market values.

Council members who voted for the change said the current system does little to protect renters from inflated prices based on the ceilings -- the maximum amount a landlord can charge according to tabulations made by the city's Rental Housing Commission.

Under the bill approved yesterday, rental increases for vacant units would be kept below market rate by a formula based on the highest comparable unit in the building. However, the maximum increase that a landlord could charge an existing tenant would be 10 percent.

The District's rent control law, enacted in 1975 and later amended, covers about 100,000 of the city's rental units. Federally funded public housing, buildings constructed after 1975 and apartments owned by landlords who have fewer than five units are exempt.

The new bill was opposed by the committee's chairman, Jim Graham (D-Ward 1). He could not persuade a majority of his colleagues on the panel to vote against the alternative bill abolishing the ceilings offered by Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) that got support from fellow committee members David A. Catania (I-At-Large), Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) and Kwame Brown (D-At Large).

Graham said he was not sure how the city's renters would be impacted if rent ceilings were abolished. He wanted to postpone a vote on the legislation to get additional public comment, but he did not have enough votes to do that either. He said he still plans to hold a hearing on the matter March 31.

"The enthusiasm of landlords to abolish the rent ceilings makes me nervous," Graham told a packed hearing room at the John A. Wilson Building.

But W. Shaun Pharr of the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington said he was pleased by the committee's vote. "We are happy about that. Tenants should be happy as well."

When the meeting ended, Fenty was surrounded by tenant activists who expressed displeasure with his vote.

"I was appalled and disappointed he voted yes," said Foggy Bottom resident Sarah Shapiro.

Van Ness resident Eleanor Sreb, 84, cheered Graham to "Keep fighting!" Sreb said that when she moved into her one-bedroom apartment in the Van Ness South complex in 1979, she paid $383 a month. Now her rent is $1,314.