In One Heated Dispute, Someone Set a Fire

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The Vernon Street Fire

On November 5, 2006, a fire broke out at 1846 Vernon Street NW in Washington D.C. The blaze came amid one of the city's fiercest battles betweeen tenants who wanted to stay in the building and a landlord who wanted them out so the property could be redeveloped. Responsibility for the blaze has never been determined and the arson probe is stalled.

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For years, Lupin Rahman had gone door-to-door on Saturday mornings summoning her friends to kickball games. Her father, Lutfar, was a chef at a downtown restaurant, and Lupin had grown up to the familiar smells of beef, rice and vegetables drifting from her family's tiny kitchen.

But by late 2005, her apartment on Vernon Street was so run-down that 10-year-old Lupin stopped using the bathroom unless her mother was nearby.

"I didn't want to get bit by a rat," said Lupin, holding out her arms. "They were this big."

Anthony Bruno, with the buildings' longtime property management company, Barac Co., e-mailed Parker about the violations, saying: "It seems a can of worms is now open. . . . Barac has a good reputation with [DCRA] and all the notices must be addressed. Barac cannot be placed into a position where it cannot respond to violations."

After the fire, Barac said it would no longer oversee the buildings. Parker said he thinks Barac quit because of the publicity generated by Graham's hearings.

In all, DCRA inspectors found code violations worth more than $160,000 in potential fines at the three complexes between 2005 and 2006. But the agency quickly closed most of the cases, saying repairs had been made or inspectors couldn't get inside buildings because of a "lack of cooperation" from tenants.

The agency pursued fines for some of the violations in court. But one case was dismissed when a DCRA inspector did not show up for a hearing, and another when, as an inspector noted in a report, the agency had "accidentally omitted" crucial information on court documents. All told, the owners have paid about $2,800 in fines, records show.

They say that once their property became the subject of a D.C. Council investigation, city inspectors spent an inordinate amount of time in the buildings looking for code violations.

"Every bloody time somebody complained about heat or hot water, we fixed it," Parker said.

In March 2006, Keith Anderson, who at the time monitored rental properties for DCRA, ordered a separate agency hearing, saying there were grounds to believe the owners had "engaged in a pattern and practice . . . to steer tenants from exercising their right to return to their rental units."

But the owners' attorney, Richard Luchs, fired off an e-mail to then-Deputy Mayor Stanley Jackson with a blunt request.

"Mr. Jackson, I am, to say the least, perplexed," Luchs wrote to Jackson about three weeks before the scheduled hearing. "When we met several months ago, you stated that [the mayor's office] did not share the view of Councilmember Graham as to our client's proposed renovation plans and that DCRA would work with us to address the property conditions. . . . While I was away last week, the attached [hearing] order arrived, which is directly contrary to what you told us in our meeting.