NEWS NEWS LOOSE LIPS he wouldn’t qualify for the city’s de facto excluded workers’ fund, which provided a one-time donation of $1,000 to 5,000 families, or the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which 1,347 individuals have applied to during the pandemic, and so did not apply. But Andrade was not the only one in his building without a job, or who did not qualify for virtually all local and federal cash assistance. With no government support, Andrade and dozens of others who lived at the New Hampshire & First Apartments near Fort Totten decided to help themselves and organized their complex. With support from the DC Tenants Union, the renters participated in various Zoom meetings to work out their demands. On April 28, they asked their landlord to cancel rent. At first, J. Alexander M a n a ge m e nt Company, the property manager, offered nothing. Eventually, the proper t y manager offered to forgive $200 in rent for every $100 a tenant pays during the first year of paying. Andrade is unsure if he’ ll accept t he offer. Entering into the payment plan means he might still have to pay thousands of dollars for an apartment where he can’t have two air conditioners running while the lights are on without losing power. And since he’s still not working, he doesn’t think he can swing it anyway. Unlike Andrade, J. Alexander Management Company received government assistance, a $150,000 to $350,000 loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program. In an email, the company’s vice president said it’s not policy to make on-the-record comments with regard to residents. That being said, organizers say the payment plan offered at New Hampshire & First Apartments is one of the better deals they know of. Most landlords are just agreeing to let tenants make up missed rent over a specified timeframe as they continue to pay current rent. After he declined to enter into such a payment agreement, Sami Bourma’s landlord filed an eviction case against him. As soon as Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Lemons allowed courts across the state to resume eviction hearings in late June, Bourma’s landlord, by way of the property manager, Bell Partners, filed cases against tenants. The landlord sued more than 100 tenants at Southern Towers, Bourma’s apartment complex in Alexandria. Tenants had their first appearances at an Alexandria courthouse over the span of three days in mid-July, and a judge ordered Bourma to return on Sept. 16. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. We know that the landlord doesn’t have a heart,” Bourma tells City Paper. “All of us are in the
same situation: laid off, no income, and kids at home.” Bourma has not been able to pay the $1,515 in rent for his one-bedroom apartment for a few months now. He lost his three sources of income when the pandemic hit—he was laid off from his job as a chef at the National Institutes of Health and his part-time job as an organizer at UNITE HERE Local 23, and he does not feel safe driving for Uber. He started receiving $758 a week in unemployment in late April, a full month after he applied. (As of this week, that $758 dropped to $158 after the federal government’s $600 benefit ended.) He also applied for a state rent relief program, but has not received an answer yet. He learned he was one of the luckier ones while watching eviction proceedings; many of his neighbors did not qualify for government assistance. B ou r m a i s continuing to rally for rent cancelation and helped organize a rent strike at Sout her n Towers that is four mont hs strong. To him, the idea of putting the little money he is getting toward rent seems foolish. What if he contracts C OV I D -19? How would his family pay his medical expenses? “It’s not about keeping the money. It’s about surviving until the city comes back together. I have an 11-year-old daughter, 1-year-old son, my wife,” Bourma says. He attended a rent cancelation rally in Columbia Heights on July 25, and made no mention of his eviction. In 99 degree heat, Bourma commanded a crowd of dozens, denouncing government bailouts to businesses but not the working-class people these businesses employ. A Spanish translator reiterated his remarks to the crowd in real time. After Bourma, tenants of other buildings shared their own frustrations and struggles. Estela, a tenant of the Meridian Heights Apartments in Columbia Heights, held a poster with photos of her own unit as she spoke about the rent strike there. The images show the ceiling caving in. Many tenants of Meridian Heights have been laid off from their service industry jobs during the pandemic, and some are undocumented. Even so, they’ve been facing ongoing pressure from the building manager to pay rent, including threats of calling the police, according to a tenant letter addressed to the property manager, NOVO Properties. NOVO Properties did not respond to questions about the letter. Like hundreds of tenants in the region, Meridian Heights residents are months into their rent strike. They keep each other motivated, and as they learn of their neighbors’ situations, they feel compelled to act, according to one Meridian Heights tenant who asked not to be named. They do not intend to accept anything short of rent cancelation.
“It’s not about keeping the money. It’s about surviving until the city comes back together. I have an 11-year-old daughter, 1-year-old son, my wife.”
Green Acres D.C.’s “once in a lifetime opportunity” to acquire Georgetown Day School’s former property involves bureaucratic buck-passing and a mysterious third party. By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Obscured in the haze of what will henceforth be known as the FY 2021 Budget Shitshow is a $48 million allocation to purchase the Georgetown Day School’s former lower and middle school campus on MacArthur Boulevard NW. The item appeared in the budget after D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s lastminute budget scramble, to the pleasant surprise of most councilmembers. The chairman called the sale a “once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase an asset,” and a potential solution to overcrowding in the Woodrow Wilson High School feeder pattern. Only At-Large Councilmember David Grosso and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White objected in the form of an amendment that would have taken the $48 million and redirected it to modernize Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Congress Heights. Grosso and White argued that it was unfair to use funds for another school in affluent Ward 3, where Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing building a new $56 million elementary school, and where most of the schools have been modernized, when there are needs in economically disadvantaged Ward 8. The amendment failed, 10-2, after a snippy debate that marked another chapter in the Grosso v. Mendo saga. (Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie recused himself from the vote because his kids attend GDS and he sits on its board of trustees. In response to a request for comment, McDuffie referred LL to the board’s chief of staff, Lauren Dickert, who did not return an email or phone message.) On the dais, Grosso accused Mendelson of prioritizing students in Northwest to the detriment of students living east of the Anacostia River. Mendelson accused Grosso of manufacturing an equity issue because DC Public Schools and the Department of General Services have not done the planning necessary to start MLK Jr.’s modernization. Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh chimed in to point out a bit of hypocrisy in Grosso’s arguments, which Mendelson recalled fondly in a follow-up interview. “Councilmember Grosso, later on in this meeting, at the behest of the mayor, but presumably with his own blessing, is asking the Council to reprogram money from a paid leave IT fund in order to purchase property on the Military Road School in Ward 4, to be used as a school
to deal with Ward 4 overcrowding,” Cheh said. “A precisely analogous situation that he’s putting forth.” What no one talked about was the disparity between the $48 million the Council put in the capital budget and the property’s assessed value of $20.5 million. Nor did anyone mention the fact that a mysterious third party already has an agreement to buy the property, and the District would essentially take over that agreement rather than negotiate directly with GDS. The question, therefore, is whether the District is getting the best deal. Jeffrey M. Zelle, the president and CEO of JM Zelle, the commercial real estate firm that originally listed the old GDS campus in 2017, could not share the appraisal on the property or identify the third party that controls it due to a confidentiality agreement. He says the entity is a school that put down a “substantial deposit” in the original purchase agreement, and they must close the deal soon or risk losing the deposit. “It’s probably the craziest confidentiality agreement I’ve ever seen,” Zelle tells LL. “That’s why no one is talking about it.” At first, it might seem as though the $27.5 million gap between GDS’s assessed value and the price the D.C. government is willing to pay for the property is outrageous. The disparity alarmed Jay Silberman and prompted him to email every councilmember, the mayor, the auditor, and Ward 3 State Board of Education Rep. Ruth Wattenberg. Silberman, a former school board member, writes in the email that he supports the District’s efforts to acquire the property, but rather than pay the $48 million, he suggests the city flex its eminent domain muscle, an extreme move LL suspects officials might be reluctant to make. The city has invoked that authority a few times in recent history: to acquire a trash transfer station in 2018, as well as the land for Audi Field in 2015 and for Nationals Park in 2005. Silberman says he’s gotten no response to his email from councilmembers or the mayor. In subsequent interviews, Mendelson says he was unaware of the difference between the amount the Council approved in the budget and the assessed value. He tells LL that Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn and City Administrator Rashad Young told him of their interest in buying the property, as well as the $48 million cost. “So that’s what we put in the budget,” he says. “It doesn’t mean they have to spend that amount. We didn’t approve the price or look at the terms.”
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