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The owner of two low-income apartment complexes in Ward 8 will pay $2 million in penalties and restitution to more than 400 tenants who, according to the D.C. attorney general, lived in dangerous and health-threatening conditions for several years.
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It is relatively rare for the Office of the Attorney General to pursue action against owners of buildings that contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide subsidized housing to some of the District’s lowest income families. But officials at the attorney general’s office said the conditions in these apartments were dire. Prosecutors on the case said they hope the settlement — and its price tag — sends a message that all tenants in the District, regardless of income, are legally entitled to live in homes that are safe.
“Tenants — all tenants in the District — deserve the same conditions and all landlords have to follow the same laws,” said Beth Mellen, the assistant deputy attorney general in the OAG’s Public Advocacy Division. “Just because your tenants are low-income or vulnerable or may not have as many housing options doesn’t mean they can be treated any differently than tenants who pay market rate.”
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Lawyers for the buildings’ owners and management company denied the allegations and any violation of D.C. law, according to the settlement agreement reached this month with the OAG.
“As a longtime owner and operator of affordable and low-income housing properties in Washington, D.C., we take our responsibilities seriously and we will continue to work hard every day to provide quality housing and services to the residents we serve,” Ed Cafasso, a spokesman for Winn Managed Properties, the owner-operator of the two communities, wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
The firm disbursed $850,000 in restitution to residents earlier this week, according Cafasso.
Southern Hills Apartments, which was originally constructed in 1948, has for several years been scheduled to be redeveloped and expanded. Winn plans to demolish the 255-unit complex and replace it with new structures that will be subdivided into 349 units. Southern Hills was one of several housing developments that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) touted during her 2021 announcement of a record $400 million investment into the District’s Housing Production Trust Fund.
D.C. development has soared under Bowser. So have housing costs.
But tenants and the OAG said the neglect of the Southern Hills complex worsened as development plans got underway.
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“What we hope to get across is just because someone is an affordable housing provider doesn’t mean they get to defer maintenance,” said Argie Weatherington, an assistant attorney general with OAG. “You have to keep the property in code compliance conditions for the entire time tenants are living there.”
DanitraPrice, 36, who has lived in complex for 13 years, said the mice infestation in her building had gotten so bad that she adopted a cat to help keep rodents out of her unit. She’s seen her own apartment deteriorate over the years with bathroom-flooding leaks, black mold, a carpet that has been breaking down and causing her breathing problems. Though she has asked for help — from the building’s maintenance firm, city regulators and HUD inspectors — Price said she has long been left with the impression that nobody cares.
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“They told me I couldn’t get a new carpet because the building needs to be knocked down, but here it is still standing and the carpet has gotten worse,” said Price, a native Washingtonian. “I’ve had to become Bob the Builder and just do my own repairs.”
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She and other residents of the Southern Hills Apartment complex will receive rent credits to pay them back for months they lived in unsafe conditions, according to the Office of the Attorney General.
“Far too many D.C. residents are living in unstable, substandard, unlawful conditions,” D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said in a statement Thursday. And the right to live in safe and healthy homes, he continued, “is especially critical as affordable housing in the District becomes increasingly scarce.”
Both apartment complexes — Southern Hills Apartments and Atlantic Terrace, which has 196 units — sit just east of Oxon Run Park in the Washington Highlands neighborhood and are under contracts from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to house low-income families.
Cafasso said the management company struggled to keep up with maintenance of its properties during the worst periods of the covid-19 pandemic, noting “it was a trying time for these two properties as our maintenance staff was unable to consistently access units and residents were confined for long periods in the apartments. While we prevented evictions for financial hardship, the backlog of maintenance items created problems.”
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The OAG began investigating the properties in November 2021 after receiving several complaints about their habitability, according to legal documents.
In 2021, HUD inspected Southern Hills Apartments and found nearly 600 housing code violations at the property, including pest and rodent infestations, broken doors and windows, leaks, mold, peeling lead-based paint and fire alarms that don’t work. The federal agency gave the complex a failing score of 26 out of 100.
Atlantic Terrace, which was renovated in 2018, according to Cafasso, also failed its 2021 HUD inspection, receiving a score of 50 out of 100 after the agency projected that the complex had more than 400 housing violations in need of remediation. The following year, both complexes improved their scores: Southern Hills received a just-passing score of 60 and Atlantic Terrace given a passing grade of 79, according to HUD inspection records.
“I think [the restitution] is good, but at this point, I think, a lot of us just want to move,” Price, the Southern Hills resident, said. “It’s a no-win situation. Nothing has been fixed. I’m so tired.”
Cafasso said the redevelopment of the Southern Hills complex is expected to proceed in 2024.
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