D.C. couple pursuing rental license endures year-long hassle

By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 9, 2010; B01

To Marina and Mark Marich, the task seemed simple, just one item on their long to-do list: get a license from the District to rent out their Capitol Hill condo. They thought it would take a month.

Instead, it took a year.

In February, March and April, their phone messages to schedule an inspection went unanswered. In June, the inspector was a no-show, after he called the wrong number. In July, when Mark called to complain that the inspector had failed to show for a second time, a city worker answering the phone hung up, telling him, "Call the mayor."

And in December, after Marina's call was bounced to four people, she turned to her neighbors.

"I am in desperate need of help," Marina wrote in an e-mail to her Shepherd Park neighborhood Yahoo group that included a timeline with the names, phone numbers and dates of her interactions with D.C.'s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. "It is beyond frustrating."

For Linda Argo, who runs the department, it was worse than that.

"It's inexcusable. How can you defend it?" said Argo, pretending to pull out her short blond hair. Especially when Argo has worked for the past three years, with some success, to eliminate such headaches for residents and to shake the sprawling agency's reputation for unresponsive bureaucrats and long lines.

It's all been part of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's promise to make the District's government run more like a business. A Washington Post poll last month found a majority of residents approve of Fenty's work to improve city services, although he has lost support in that area since January 2008.

"We've made enormous strides, but we're not done. You're never done," Argo said. "There's always something you can fix."

Argo stressed that the Mariches' experience was an anomaly, a case that fell through the cracks. Last year, the department issued more than 1,200 residential rental licenses like the one the couple were seeking, and it renewed an additional 4,094.

In 2008, Argo fired more than half the city's residential inspectors for failing to become certified. The agency shrank its basic license application from 12 pages to two and won kudos from a coalition of citizen associations for being "most improved." Argo's aide uses Twitter to broadcast wait times and navigation tips to customers.

The Mariches' ordeal might have been an aberration, but the couple repeatedly worked through the system. It was not until their D.C. Council member intervened that they prevailed.

Within weeks of learning from their building manager in December 2008 that they did not have a license on file for the condo they had been renting out near Lincoln Park, the couple mailed in an application and a check for $173.

After unreturned follow-up calls, Marina connected with an administrator in January. Marina was told then that once an inspection was complete, she would receive a license within five to 10 days. Instead, she would spend the next four months dialing four phone numbers and leaving multiple messages to schedule an inspection. Inside a coffee-stained manila folder, Marina, 35, began scribbling meticulous notes of her calls.

"I was optimistic that if we kept doing it the way we were supposed to, it would all work out," she said.

The first inspection, scheduled for June, was a bust when the inspector apparently called the couple's home number instead of the tenant's cellphone to access the apartment. On the eve of a trip to Serbia with her two toddlers, Marina scheduled a second inspection and handed the task to her husband, who would join the family a week later. When the inspector failed to show the second time, Mark, 39, pressed to speak with someone to file a complaint. That was when he was told to try the mayor.

The inspector arrived unannounced the next day, July 21, and got inside. The apartment failed inspection; it needed upgrades to the kitchen and bathroom outlets, and a new smoke detector.

After the Mariches' vacation, an electrician fixed the problems in September. Messages to the inspector that month and the next went unanswered. In mid-October, Marina reached a scheduler. She set a new inspection date but only after she negotiated for the waiver of a fee the office tried to charge because too much time had passed since the initial application was filed.

This time, the apartment passed inspection. Marina checked in a few days later, but no paperwork had been filed.

As the year anniversary approached in December, there was still no record of the re-inspection. On Dec. 28, Marina learned that the department's last entry showed the failed inspection from July.

She was told, according to her notes, that the inspector, who "is the only person who can help me," was out of the office until Jan. 6, and that the supervisor "is new and may not be able to help me."

Marina, a communications consultant, comes across as politely persistent. She didn't want to cause problems, she said, or get anyone in trouble. But she had reached her limit.

When she did not hear back from the supervisor, she turned to the e-mail group list on Dec. 30. Within 10 minutes, Marina got a response from an aide to her council member, Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), and later a personal message from Bowser.

"The timeline you describe is appalling. Missed visits and unreturned calls are especially troubling," Bowser wrote in a message to the Internet mailing list and to Argo. Bowser forwarded a copy to the mayor, who said he would wait for word from Argo.

Once Bowser's aide connected Marina with his department contact, she quickly received a call from the supervisor, who apologized for the ordeal.

The next day, New Year's Eve, the supervisor called again. The Mariches' license was ready -- one year and three days later.

No one was let go over what Argo called the Mariches' "horror story." But she said the unreturned messages and bounced phone calls, in particular, prompted a discussion with division managers about customer service. "We told them they needed to hold these people accountable," she said.

The department is developing an integrated computer system that Argo said should fix the communication gap between the inspections and licensing divisions. The new system should automatically flag cases that go untouched for too many days. Even before the Mariches' story surfaced, the agency had shifted appointment-making responsibilities from inspectors to a dedicated scheduling unit.

Two weeks after Marina picked up her one-page license at the department's North Capitol Street headquarters, there was another glitch. She was celebrating a friend's birthday when her husband sent a text message with some bad news. A form letter had arrived notifying the couple that their license had been denied and that they had failed inspection.

Argo said that the letter was a mistake and that the department's records reflect a valid license for the Mariches' condo. But Argo has no idea why the rejection letter was sent. "It's really strange," she said. But then, after reflecting on the couple's year-long odyssey, Argo added, "In a way, I wasn't surprised."

Neither were the Mariches, whose license is up for renewal in two years.