A Failure in Enforcement

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A Crumbling Home

At a troubled Southeast apartment complex, tenants have reported no heat or gas, a falling ceiling, cracked walls, mice and a defective water heater in recent years. The owner says he's made repairs in recent months, but wants tenants to leave so that he can sell the building.

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"There's a total consciousness about this," Argo said. "It is on our radar screen. It is a priority."

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But change has been slow at DCRA, which Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has repeatedly declared one of the city's most troubled agencies. It is also one of the most crucial: 52 percent of the city's residents are renters, one of the highest rates among comparable-size cities nationwide.

The sprawling agency, which oversees everything from construction permits to business licensing, has had five directors in seven years and has been studied by consultants, staff, auditors, lawyers and other professional groups at least 10 times in the past decade.

D.C. Council members have criticized a series of DCRA employees. They include Raenelle Humbles Zapata, in charge of overseeing rental housing, accused during a hearing by council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) of "gross negligence" for erroneously approving eviction requests for three rental complexes. At the time, Zapata said she had made a mistake but "had excellent reviews" at DCRA. She left in 2005.

Graham also questioned DCRA official Linda Harried for giving landlords letters approving the sale of apartment buildings without offering them to tenants first, as District law requires. Harried and others argued that they were following the law at the time. Harried left DCRA months later.

She reported to former DCRA administrator James Aldridge, who acknowledged during a council hearing in 2005 that he did not intervene when Harried signed off on the sales. When Aldridge would not say that the agency had done anything wrong, council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) fumed, "I am a little bit irate that the residents of the District of Columbia, who have been paying the salary of this employee for over twenty-some years, cannot get what I consider an accurate or honest answer."

Aldridge said in an interview that Graham was "simply grandstanding."

"DCRA interpreted the [law] as the council drafted it," he said.

Graham said DCRA for years has favored landlords, even when it was clear that tenants' rights were violated.

"Landlords are forever finding, by hook or by crook, another loophole," Graham said. "It's the profit engine that drives on and on here. A DCRA that is not very aggressive and marginally competent . . . all of that plays into the hands of those who want to make a buck off tenants."

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