Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs
Budget Oversight Hearing
Testimony of Kiesha Davis
Thursday, April 13, 2017, 10am
John A. Wilson Building
Room 500
Hi, my name is Kiesha Davis and I’m a Ward 8 voter. Thank you Councilmember Mendelson and the Committee of the Whole for the opportunity to testify today. My mom and I have been in living at Atlantic Terrace, owned by Winn Management, since 1991. Poor living conditions have been an issue for us since shortly after we moved in, in the 90’s. DCRA has not done its job holding Winn Mgmt accountable, so we are calling for greater funding and reforms to the department.
To start with, the ceiling of the unit I just moved out of collapsed three times. The first time, some friends and I had just left my room when half of the ceiling collapsed. The ceiling stayed open for at least 24 hours before maintenance came to put a board up. Within that week they repaired it. But the burden of the cleanup was on my friend, my mom and me, because the mess affected everything in the room.
The other two times we were in the living room. The ceilings and walls throughout the apartment sometimes develop cracks and mold. This time it was a crack in the living room - it starts in one section, and gets larger and larger. Finally in the living room above the couch area, half of the ceiling collapsed. They never fixed the whole ceiling, just that spot where it fell in. The ceiling fell another time in the exact same area some years later.
Maintenance has come and put putty and paint over the cracks, which doesn’t solve the problem, for about 20 plus years. Other residents’ ceilings have crashed too, and recently one man fell through the floor.
Whenever we’ve gotten DCRA involved, it has taken a while for management to respond. Once management used an excuse that they were unable to gain entry to the unit, which was incorrect. They filed for an extension so they wouldn’t start getting excessive fees. Once that date was nearing, they started to come in to do patches here and there. That’s when my mom had to file with the housing conditions court, because management just painted over the mold in the closet, rather than dealing with it. The cracks, they just puttied and painted over it. A year ago, management told me and my neighbors that out of safety concerns they needed to replace the entire ceiling of my mom’s bedroom, but they never did. No one required them to.
In 2015 we had carbon monoxide leaking from the stove, and it took management a week to get my mom a new stove. We had a resident Ms. Viola who felt that something in the vent was making her very ill. She was moved out in 2016, and not even a week later, she died on the back porch of a temporary unit she had been relocated to. Less than a month after new people moved into her unit, the ceiling collapsed. The unit next door, the woman had water damage in her wall to the point that you could put your hand on the wall and it was soggy like a sponge.
An inspector came out six months ago, and he saw the cracks in the same places that were reported before. There were about $2700 worth of fines. Months after he was supposed to return, an inspector came out on March 29th and said Management filed for an extension to re-inspect. I asked the inspector can he help me explain to my mother why Management was not being held accountable. We moved to a newly renovated unit on March 30th 2017 and we see new housing code violations already, including cracks in the walls and ceilings. I am tired of seeing my mother suffer and nothing is being done.
DCRA’s fines need to be bigger, and they need to be collected all the time, not half the time. Landlords keep putting residents in dangerous conditions because slumlords just see fines as a cost of doing business. We also know that Mayor Bowser added three inspectors to the budget, but we need more - that’s still only 16 city-wide. We need a more proactive DCRA that intentionally targets the worst slumlords, until they either improve or leave DC.
These conditions are unsafe and there’s no accountability. Why are landlords like Winn still allowed to do business in DC? If DCRA can’t do it, how about asking for help from Department of Energy and Environment Inspectors? Maybe we should give Inspector jobs to returning citizens. There has to be a better way to enforce housing code, before more tenants suffer or die.