‘VERY BAD CONDIC STAY DC is intended to help tenants impacted by the pandemic cover housing costs. But some of that money goes to landlords whose buildings are in poor condition. By Amanda Michelle Gomez Photographs by Darrow Montgomery
On a muggy day in June, the bathroom ceiling inside Eduardo Reyes’ unit is covered in cardboard he put there himself. Reyes, who has lived at Meridian Heights Apartments on 15th Street NW with his wife and 17-year-old son since 2008, blocked the hole after his family saw insects and gunk emerge from it. The cardboard was supposed to be a temporary fix. Reyes says he notified the property manager in late February, when the problem started. He called the emergency hotline. He visited the property manager’s office. Five months later, the cardboard is finally gone. The property manager made much needed repairs this week after receiving multiple questions about housing conditions. Reyes organized with tenants in his building and others connected to the same owner—a complicated web of limited liability companies—who have similar repair issues. They noticed a trend among the people living in these properties the city has cited dozens of times for housing violations: Nearly all of them are Latinx Spanish speakers. Reyes doesn’t want to vacate his apartment. It would be expensive to move elsewhere. Like many people in D.C. and across the world, Reyes struggled to make rent payments during the pandemic. Many people in his building lost their jobs in the service industry, and others contracted COVID-19. One tenant died of the disease. “If they give me an indemnification, then I will leave,” Reyes says in Spanish. “Otherwise, I won’t.” “You don’t want to leave but I want to leave,” his wife says. “Because it is scary.” Reyes applied for rental assistance through the Stronger Together by Assisting You program, better known as STAY DC, a District government initiative that disperses federal funds to help individuals cover up to 18 months of past or upcoming rent. Of the
20 tenants at Reyes’ 62-unit building that applied or started an application for STAY DC money, five have been approved as of July 9. The D.C. government is trying to get federal dollars into the pockets of landlords whose tenants owe rent quickly, but STAY DC has its own headaches: Many tenants needed help because the application was confusing and required a lot of paperwork, and those with strained relationships with property managers struggled to work together to submit applications. D.C. needs to spend $130 million in rental assistance by Sept. 30 or the Biden administration will revoke the funds. STAY DC leaves Reyes, other tenants, and advocates feeling conflicted. Tenants apply because they know D.C.’s temporary eviction ban will eventually end. But the troubling conditions at their building and others connected to the same owners have become
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an open secret in D.C. due to highly visible protests aimed at the landlord and property managers. Tenants and advocates question whether landlords are being held accountable for uninhabitable conditions and if, by funneling money into the hands of landlords overseeing troubled properties, STAY DC actually rewards them. “How can the Council ensure that the landlords who receive this money have some obligation to fix these problems, especially because this money is what they say they need,” asks Beth Mellen, director of Legal Aid’s Eviction Defense Project. “Landlords often say, ‘Well, when tenants don’t pay rent, I can’t make the repairs. I don’t have the money.’ They are about to get tens of thousands of dollars in rent money ... But the purpose of that program is not to keep tenants housed in unsafe conditions, in unhealthy conditions.”
