Image Credits: @katewarner on Unsplash (Unsplash License)
In recent years, Washington D.C. and its surrounding metropolitan areas of Maryland and Virginia have found themselves in the throes of an affordable housing crisis. This crisis has coalesced due to a lack of affordable housing accommodations, poor government response to address the issue, and predatory, often illegal, leasing practices by landlords. Low-income residents, in particular, struggle to find reasonably priced housing as “[a]ffordable housing stock has trended downward while rents have trended upward,” according to a recent lawsuit filed by the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia against one of the major property management companies in the city. This lawsuit is a microcosm of the affordability crisis, highlighting the illegal business practices employed by landlords in the District of Columbia and how those practices are a detriment to the city’s low-income residents searching for adequate or affordable housing in a market that has a shortage of it.
Recognizing the affordability crisis, which has resulted in chronic homelessness as tenants are increasingly squeezed out of their homes, lawmakers have attempted to find a solution and provide relief for renters. This has come in the form of a housing voucher program, colloquially referred to as Section 8, managed by the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA). The program was started in the 1970s and has seen increased emphasis under the administration of Mayor Muriel Bowser. These vouchers permanently pay rent for housing in the private market, with tenant’s only providing a nominal amount of their income towards monthly payments. The amount that tenants pay could be up to thirty percent of their monthly income, allowing them to reserve the rest of their take-home pay for utilities and other living expenses. Despite an unprecedented number of 2,444 vouchers being issued in 2022, the program has seen limited success as less than a quarter of voucher holders were able to use them, and the affordability and homelessness crisis plaguing the city have continued. The shortcomings of the voucher program have been attributed to failures and mismanagement by the DCHA, as well as rampant housing discrimination and unfair practices by landlords in the DMV area.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently issued a report finding that the DCHA was deficient in up to 82 federal housing standards, and that the department is in federal violation of providing adequate living quarters to its District of Columbia tenants. The DCHA currently has roughly a quarter of its 8,000 units sitting vacant, this is the lowest rate of public housing vacancy of any large public housing authority in the nation. Public housing properties owned by the DCHA face a consistent number of issues before they can be turned around to prospective tenants. The most prominent issues are violence, hazardous levels of lead-paint, electrical and plumbing code violations, water damage, and mold growth. Many of these issues are fixable; however, the DCHA struggles to address them because of safety concerns for its employees and due to failures in administration up to its board-of-directors level. Current DCHA director Brenda Donald has been criticized for being appointed to the role without having any relevant property management or housing program experience. HUD specifically recommended that she receive training in “critical housing authority functions” and the overall role of being executive of the board. Donald has defended herself from criticisms, pointing to her successful tenure leading the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and describing the benchmarks she has set for the DCHA to reach. Although Donald has outlined goals for the DCHA, they have not been met and occupancy rates have continued to plummet. The housing authority was issued a deadline of November 30 to respond to the findings and recommendations provided by HUD, otherwise they risk escalating action for defaulting on their agreement with the federal government.
Aside from shortcomings of the DCHA contributing to the current affordability and homelessness issues, discrimination by landlords against tenants has been a flashpoint that has played out in the civil division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The Office of the Attorney General sued three major property management firms and their top executives in the case District of Columbia v. DARO REALTY, LLC, et al., with the court finding in favor of the District. In the case, the real estate firms were found to have illegally discriminated against current and prospective tenants based on legally protected statuses. The prosecution alleged that landlords specifically targeted tenants on whether they would be paying rent through the voucher program administered by the DCHA, known as source-of-income discrimination. The source-of-income discrimination employed by the landlords was found to be in violation of existing civil rights and consumer protection laws, and also, according to the Office of the Attorney General, “perpetuated Jim Crow racism that pushes Black and Brown families out of certain areas of the District of Columbia”. Many of these residents utilize the DCHA housing vouchers to pay for their rent, so the OAG made this claim because the voucher discrimination used by landlords is contributing to “among the highest levels of gentrification and displacement of longtime black and brown residents of any city in the country in recent years”. The court ordered the real estate companies and their executives to pay a total of $10 million in civil penalties as part of their settlement. They were also forced to dissolve their property management arms, being banned from managing real estate in the District of Columbia in perpetuity. The individual executives of the companies agreed to forfeit their real estate licenses in the District of Columbia for a period of fifteen years due to their discriminatory practices in regards to the Section 8 housing codes that they violated. The settlement in the case is the largest housing discrimination penalty in U.S. history and has set precedent for follow up cases filed by prosecutors to crackdown on voucher status discrimination. This precedent mainly plays out in the legal system, being seen in the successive case District of Columbia v. Stephen Talley. Talley, the landlord defendant, was found to have engaged in the same scheme of source-of-income related discriminatory practices as DARO Realty, and was ordered to pay over $100,000 to the District of Columbia and is now required to follow stringent guidelines and checks with the District to continue managing real estate in the city.
Simultaneously, as the proceedings in the District of Columbia courts were playing out, the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland was suing Westminster Management, a property management firm owned by Jared Kushner under his company Kushner Companies. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) alleged that Westminster Management engaged in “unfair or deceptive trade practices” at over a dozen rental property communities spanning the state of Maryland, which took advantage of low-income tenants and violated their civil rights and broke consumer protection laws protected by the Consumer Protection Act. The OAG of Maryland alleged that, among other offenses, Westminster Management provided housing that was “not in good, habitable condition” and failed “to return small credit amounts to tenants and instead [wrote] off those amounts”. In the lawsuit, filed as Consumer Protection Division v. Westminster Management, LLC, et al., the real estate company denied the allegations against them, but settled in court for a civil penalty of $3,250,000 along with restitution. These recent cases that have been settled in the DMV area serve as a warning to other landlords who attempt to engage in discriminatory and unfair business practices that harm low-income residents amid the current affordable housing crisis in the region.
Current attempts by lawmakers to curb chronic homelessness and solve the affordable housing crisis in the form of Section 8 voucher programs have fallen short of expectations. The District of Columbia is making attempts to solve deficiencies in the program with mixed results. Even if the shortcomings of the program are fully solved, the voucher program might not be enough to completely solve the affordable housing crisis at hand. For inspiration, lawmakers in the district can look at proposals in nearby Arlington County. Lawmakers there are examining current zoning laws in suburban neighborhoods, hoping to get rid of single-family zoning. The aim of this would be to allow new multifamily and apartment units to be developed in these areas, relying on market forces to decrease housing prices by increasing the supply of homes. Changing the zoning laws could also be employed in suburban areas of the District of Columbia, and if combined with other initiatives like the current voucher program, could be a concrete step to lifting the barriers to affordable housing for residents in the city. Zoning initiatives are not without resistance. They have faced stiff opposition from property owners in these areas since the 1990s, who fear the value of their property decreasing and the character of their neighborhoods changing.
The answer to the affordable housing crisis and chronic homelessness that is endemic to the District of Columbia may be in a combination of current government initiatives from voucher programs to zoning law changes, or it could be in an unrealized solution to come into effect in the future. As time progresses and the issue continues to grow, playing out in the court system and the public square, it is becoming abundantly clear that the crises at hand are detrimental to society. Until the affordability and homelessness issues are solved, the landscape of Washington D.C. will be defined just as much by the tent encampments that growingly dot the city, as it is renowned for its wealth of historic landmarks and monuments.