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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"Mr. Anderson answers ultimately to you and we ask that you cause this hearing to be cancelled."

Jackson replied by e-mail, assuring Luchs that the "matter was being addressed" by DCRA.

Anderson postponed the hearing, and it is yet to be held.

Just days after his first e-mail, Luchs again e-mailed the deputy mayor after a DCRA official raised questions about repairs at the owners' building on 16th Street. "Mr. Jackson, once again, we call upon you for the promised cooperation from DCRA on the housing inspection issues. . . . Your intervention would be appreciated."

Jackson wrote back, "I have been assured . . . that the agency is working with you to address your concerns."

Luchs did not return calls seeking comment.

At a D.C. Council meeting after the fire, Graham asked Anderson and then-DCRA Director Patrick Canavan whether the deputy mayor had any influence on the decision to scrap the agency's hearing.

Anderson said he called it off because DCRA and the buildings' owners were trying to reach a settlement. No settlement was ever reached.

Canavan said he had no recollection of the deputy mayor contacting him. But had there been a call, Canavan pointed out, the deputy mayor would have likely said, " 'You know what? I want you to provide good customer service.' . . . He wouldn't in any way ask us to do anything that's inappropriate."

Graham said: "You want us to believe that this is purely coincidental?"

Jackson, now the acting president of the University of the District of Columbia, said his e-mails showed only that he was pushing DCRA to provide feedback to the property owners.

There was "no undue influence," he said. "I have been one of the strongest advocates in supporting affordability."

* * *

In mid-2006, the owners tried something new.

They started paying Stan Ford, who managed the properties for Barac, $2,500 for every apartment that became empty. Ford acknowledged at Graham's hearings that he had earned $75,000 in six months by clearing 30 apartments.

"The person who these tenants looked to for repairs and maintenance and making sure that they had a quality of life in this building, in other words the property manager, was also the person who was profiting handsomely from every vacant apartment," Graham said.

Ford countered, "No tenant went without repairs at any time."

He declined to comment for this report, but at the time of the hearing, his attorney said that Ford did nothing wrong.

Anowara Begum's family had decided to leave and accepted a $20,000 move-out payment from the owners. Earlier, they had scraped together a down payment for a small house in Springfield, which they rented out. They began planning their move and told the landlords that they would leave in a matter of weeks.

But some tenants were still refusing to go. By September, the friction on Vernon Street intensified.

Tenants called police at least three times in the weeks before the fire. One tenant told police that two men had banged on doors yelling, "You've got to move out of this building in 24 hours!" Another reported a stranger knocking on doors shouting, "You have to move out! You have 48 hours," according to a police report of the incident. Tenants also told the D.C. Council that vandals had smashed glass panels on doors and cut electrical cables.

Then, just days before Begum's family planned to move out, the building caught fire. At 10:40 p.m. on a Sunday in November, a series of calls went out to 911, pleas for help mixed with the sounds of screams and barking dogs.

"Our apartment is on fire and we're locked in," a terrified tenant from the second floor told the 911 operator.

"The apartment building is on fire?"

"Yes, ma'am. . . . My door is on fire. We can't get out of the apartment."

Begum and her two children had been having a late supper with friends when smoke overwhelmed the stairwell just outside their third-floor apartment. They ran to the balcony, where Begum offered a silent prayer: "Please save my children."

Begum's son and a friend shimmied down the drainpipe, landing bruised and shaken on the ground. Her daughter was later rescued by firefighters. But when Begum started sliding down the pipe, it came loose and toppled alongside the building, sending her to the alley below.

She lost consciousness, her heel fractured.

Her husband, Abdul Kader, was working a late-night job as a waiter at the Madison Hotel when a friend called to say the building was on fire.

"Where is my family? Where is my son? Where is my daughter?" he remembers crying.

He caught a taxi, but it took him most of the night to find them; they had been transported to three different hospitals.

"In one night," he said, "I lost 10 pounds."

* * *

Lupin, who lived in the building next door, wrote to the D.C. Council 11 days later: "Please help us." Her family, along with every other tenant, was too shaken to return home after the fire. Perseus's Cohen said Lupin's family was given a move-out deal that included an apartment in another of the owners' buildings.

With the Vernon Street buildings empty, the owners could bypass a District law that gives tenants the first shot at buying their apartments. The property sold last summer for $4 million.

Parker said he opted not to renovate once tenants were gone because he feared that the controversy would jeopardize the necessary construction permits. He said his company had become a scapegoat in a politically charged debate over tenants' rights.

At a council hearing, neighbors, a tenant and Graham questioned whether the vandalism and fire could have been part of a campaign to force tenants out.

"I believe that someone set the fire on purpose because we had not agreed to vacate the building," said Rabia Begum, a Montgomery College student who lived at the property with her family.

Parker denied wrongdoing. He suggested in an interview that the fire was set by former tenants who wanted to take lucrative move-out offers but couldn't because they had sublet their apartments to others.

"We didn't do it," Parker said. "It would not benefit me in the slightest to do that, and it wouldn't benefit Perseus in the slightest to do that."

He said repairs were made at the building and tenants were offered the chance to return after renovations were complete. He also said tenants were offered "an immeasurable amount of money" to move out.

"We're very sorry all this stuff happened. . . . If I didn't believe I was doing something for the benefit of my tenants, I never would have done it," Parker said.

On Vernon Street, the new owner has announced plans to develop condominiums. The law gives tenants exclusive authority to decide whether to turn rental units into condominiums, but with a vacant building, the owner can get a pass from DCRA to quickly convert and save thousands of dollars on a condominium conversion fee normally imposed on developers.

The new owner has already applied. In late January, construction workers were busy gutting the buildings, hauling loads of drywall and debris to a trash bin on the street.

Meanwhile, the city's investigation at Vernon Street has been idle since the beginning of 2007, when council oversight of rental housing transferred from Graham to Marion Barry (D-Ward 8). The arson investigation is also inactive.

Handwritten notes by fire investigators, made 11 days after the fire, detail a to-do list: Get documents from tenants, study lease agreements, follow up on the shopping bag that had been found with the container of gasoline and alcohol.

But Sgt. Phillip Proctor of the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department said investigators were unable to find tenants.

"We just could not track those individuals down," he said. "We really ended up having no complainant, if you will. We really tried."

Proctor said investigators also interviewed property manager Ford, who agreed to turn over lease agreements and other records. But Bolton, with Perseus Realty, stepped in.

"Mr. Bolton wasn't happy at all and was not helpful at all," Proctor said. "He told us we needed a subpoena. It was very frustrating."

Proctor said the U.S. attorney's office did not issue a subpoena, leaving investigators "kind of shooting in the dark."

But U.S. attorney's office spokesman Channing Phillips said the fire department never referred the case. Bolton said he cooperated fully with investigators.

Tenants at the owners' two other buildings on T Street and 16th Street say they are now in the midst of precisely the same struggle, with run-down conditions, eviction notices and letters urging them to leave. Ford, who resigned from Barac in late 2006, is now managing the two buildings.

Last October, tenants on T Street found a sign from Ford posted in the lobby: "If you would like to make money, you need to pay attention to this notice. The owner of the property will offer money to all tenants if they sign an agreement to move out."

Parker said he wants to renovate the building and bring the tenants back.

Meanwhile, more than a year after the fire, Anowara Begum still walks with a cane and cooks dinner sitting in a chair at the stove. Her injury has caused some permanent deformity, her medical records show, and she complains of persistent pain. The family is suing her former landlords, citing dangerous conditions, an aggressive campaign to push tenants out and an unsecured building that allowed arsonists to enter.

The family moved into the house in Virginia last fall, and her husband commutes to the city for back-to-back jobs, waiting tables from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. five days a week.

"In 10 years of living there, nothing ever happened," Abdul Kader said. "They scared us into leaving."

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.