The current rent control law covers only about 90,000 households in DC and has several glaring loopholes that easily allow landlords to raise rents to market rate. Our platform is comprehensive in its scope and has three main goals:
expand rent control to protect more tenants
close loopholes in the existing law to stop the loss of affordable housing
keep rent-controlled housing affordable for current tenants
Expand Rent Control to Protect More Tenants
Right now, only 90,000 households in DC are covered by rent control. Because of the way the law is written, units in smaller buildings (e.g. less than 4 units) can move in and out of rent control depending on who owns the building. This means that when a building is sold, rents that were previously affordable can double with as little as a month’s notice. Thousands of tenants in DC are vulnerable to these kinds of increases and would be protected with our proposed changes.
No new buildings have been added to the stock of rent controlled housing for the past 30 years of rent control in D.C. This means that the number of affordable units in the District has been steadily declining since the mid-1980s—we’ve lost around 50,000 units already. Changing the date of eligibility for rent control will protect thousands of additional households from steep rent increases and expand affordability in the District.
The date of construction that determines whether buildings are eligible has been the same for the past 30 years—we need a dynamic date. After a building has been at market rate for 15 years, it should then be covered under rent control so that we are automatically increasing our supply of affordable housing in the District every year.
Currently the law does not have a cap on how often rents can increase in market-rate housing. This change will provide more stability and predictability for ALL tenants in DC.
Close Existing Loopholes in the Law
The Urban Institute estimates that between 1985, when rent control was first passed in DC, and 2011, the District lost approximately 50,000 units of rent-controlled housing. We cannot afford to lose one more unit. Under the current law, there are several petitions that landlords can use to raise rents by hundreds of dollars—often pitting neighbor against neighbor. Even if these tenants are still technically protected by rent control, the rents are no longer affordable. We must tighten the rent control law so that tenants can rest assured that their rent increases will be limited for the lifetime of their tenancy.
Voluntary Agreements (VAs) allow tenants to “voluntarily” lift rent control limits for a one-time increase to market rate in exchange for upgrades to the building. Often developers invite current tenants to keep their own rents protected by rent control while agreeing to increase rents on apartments when new tenants move in. The end result is that over time the rents in the building increase significantly, and lower income tenants face more and more pressure to move out to make way for higher-income tenants. VAs are used to manipulate low-income tenants into choosing between having safe, habitable housing and maintaining affordability for the future. We know that this is a false choice and that tenants should be guaranteed safe, healthy homes without sacrificing future affordability.
Currently the bar is low for landlords to get their petitions approved: there are loosely enforced, arbitrary requirements that allow landlords to raise the rents to market rate without justification or consequence. We want the government to scrutinize how many losses a landlord reports and the reasons behind them: did the landlord intentionally let their building fall into disrepair? Was the building left intentionally vacant? Landlords should not be rewarded for providing unsafe, unhabitable housing.
We need better oversight and enforcement of all of these petitions, specifically:
- stronger audits of landlord petitions by DHCD
- a requirement that all landlords applying for petitions must maintain a capital reserve (savings account) and demonstrate substantial compliance with the housing code in order to qualify
Capital Improvement Petitions allow landlords who qualify to pass on the cost of building improvements to the renters, which can increase rents by up to 20% until the cost is paid off. These upgrades have historically included building-wide systems like heating and cooling, new windows, or installing new appliances, but currently there are not clear guidelines on what upgrades qualify as capital improvements. Moreover, costs for such upgrades are not clearly spelled out.
Hardship Petitions allow landlords who are not making at least a 12% return on their investment to permanently increase rents to a level that allows them that rate of return. These increases can be as high as 250% in some cases, effectively evicting any low-income tenants in the building. Many of these tenants have had to live in extremely poor housing conditions for many years. We believe that no investor, landlord or otherwise, should be guaranteed a return, especially not at the cost of people’s homes. In addition to the better oversight and requirement of proven reserves, we demand several changes to the current law:
- Limit the hardship increases to properties whose profit rate is less than the yield on a ten-year U.S. treasury note (but capped at 5%)
- Measure a property’s profitability by net income rather than rate of return on investment
- Require implementation of hardship increases on a staggered basis at a rate of no more than 5% per year and termination of the hardship increase once the profit rate is attained
- Make hardship increases temporary rather than permanent
Existing law allows landlords to file a petition to increase rents up to 125% if the building is in significant need of upgrades. In addition to stronger oversight and the requirement of proven reserves, increases under a Substantial Rehabilitation Petition must be temporary rather than permanent, returning rents to pre-petition rates after the cost of the repairs has been paid off.
Keep Rent-Controlled Housing Affordable
Current law caps annual increases at inflation (CPI) plus 2%. This means that even in rent-controlled units, rent increases are still outpacing wage increases in the District, leaving residents on fixed incomes vulnerable to displacement. Capping the increase at CPI will tie housing cost increases more closely to increases in income, thereby preventing renters from being priced out of rent-controlled housing.
Currently the law allows a landlord to take a 10 to 20% increase when tenants move out, which rewards landlords for displacing tenants. We need to eliminate this incentive so that low-income tenants are not pressured to move out of their homes for landlords’ profit.