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.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

When landlords fail to make repairs, DCRA can take them to court at the city's Office of Administrative Hearings and pursue fines. But poor record-keeping and follow-through have allowed dozens of landlords to escape penalties.

In the past three years, DCRA regularly sent legal notices to landlords using old or inaccurate addresses or notified the wrong person or company, a problem that administrative law judges have warned the agency about for years.

When mail is returned "undeliverable," judges give the agency a second chance to get the address right. But DCRA has often opted to dismiss cases without trying a second time.

Even when DCRA had the correct address, it often failed to follow up with a required second notice to unresponsive landlords. The agency, for example, filed more than 20 cases in 2005 against the company run by former D.C. Council member H.R. Crawford, citing uncollected trash and weeds at the company's apartment complex in Southeast. But the cases were dismissed in 2006 after Crawford failed to respond and DCRA did not send a required second notice.

Crawford said that he responded to all violations but that the complex was scheduled to be torn down and had become a dumping ground. He added that his company in late 2004 became a silent partner in the property.

DCRA officials attribute the dismissals to administrative problems.

In 11 cases, violations were dropped because the legal notices themselves were defective. In one case, DCRA attempted to fine a landlord $1,000 but didn't say why, inexplicably citing an unrelated statute that governs payments to dead firefighters and police officers.

Together, the hundreds of dismissed cases represented $664,000 in potential fines against landlords.

When judges imposed fines and landlords didn't pay, DCRA often failed to take the next step, putting liens on properties. A review of the 80 cases from 2005 with unpaid fines shows that DCRA placed liens on just 29 properties.

Argo said DCRA recently changed the way it sends legal notices to landlords to ensure that cases aren't dismissed. She also said that the agency is working out glitches with the Office of Administrative Hearings. Since January 2007, she said, the agency has issued 154 liens against properties for failure to pay delinquent fines.

"We are not just putting a fresh new coat of paint on the walls here," she said. "We are getting into the guts of DCRA and revitalizing our staff, our process and our procedures from the bottom up."

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