Tenants at Fabled Kennedy-Warren Stage a Rent Strike

The company is proposing to more than double rents in newly leased units. A first-floor efficiency that used to go for $1,430 a month would cost $3,333. Rent for a two-bedroom on the 10th floor would increase from $3,974 to $8,400, according to a rate list provided by the tenant association.

"On the one hand, we want landlords to upkeep a building, but the question is, should you up their rent and make tenants pay for vanity bathrooms and granite tops in the kitchen?" said D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3).

Jim McGrath, chairman of the D.C. Tenants Advocacy Coalition, said landlords often use renovation to push tenants out, enabling them to raise rents after remodeling. Although tenants have the right to return after renovations are completed, they rarely do, he said.

"It's a tactic of the landlord to kill rent control," McGrath said.

The Kennedy-Warren tenant association has filed a petition with the D.C. Rental Accommodations and Conversion Division, which is responsible for administering rent control laws.

A judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings is scheduled to review the dispute Feb. 28.

Like other tenants who have refused to pay the increase, Greene, the tenant association president, sends her rent check, without the surcharge, to a lawyer who deposits it in a city escrow account, where it is to be held until the matter is resolved.

She was part of the association in 1996, when it thought it had struck a deal with B.F. Saul to lock in rental rates in exchange for tenants' support of the tower's construction. Rent increases in rent-controlled buildings are capped at the yearly increase in the cost of living plus two percentage points, and surcharges for buildingwide capital improvement projects are capped at 20 percent, according to the D.C. Office of the Tenant Advocate.

B.F. Saul divided its renovation increases into two sums. A $179 monthly surcharge, which by law can last only eight years, went into effect in June. Some renters refused to pay, but there was no group effort to strike. That changed when the second one went into effect.

Greene said she regrets that the association was not more specific about its demands in 1996, which included forcing the landlord to upgrade the electrical and plumbing systems.

"We were the tool to support them, and then they turned on us," said Greene, 70, a retired restaurant owner who has lived in the building for 24 years.

While the parties wait for the judge to resolve the dispute, B.F. Saul is asking tenants to sign an agreement to lock in their rents without the surcharges in exchange for the ability to raise rents in the vacated apartments. Under D.C. law, the landlord needs 70 percent of the tenants to sign for the agreement to take effect.

Tenants said the company has told renters that if they don't sign, they will be subject to larger rent increases. The company has given residents until Jan. 31 to make a decision, tenants said.

Joel Cohn, legislative director for the District's acting chief tenant advocate, Johanna Shreve, said landlords are increasingly using such agreements and unfairly putting the burden of capital improvements and rate increases on future tenants.

"You can't coerce tenants, but this seems to coerce the tenants," Cohn said. "If you vote against the agreement, you're treated like a vacant unit" and therefore subject to a larger rent increase.

B.F. Saul plans to move the remaining tenants around the building as it renovates a tier at a time, the tenants said. The apartments will have new floor plans and upgrades consistent with new buildings in the District.

Ellen Ruina, 57, who has lived at the Kennedy-Warren since 2004, said that if she didn't love her ninth-floor apartment so much, she would have been gone by now.

"I understand it's a business," she said. "I understand they need to modernize, but the way they're handling it has been so unpleasant."