Last September, the D.C. Council passed a bill that landlords called a “win” — one they hoped would restore eviction speeds back to pre-pandemic levels.
Just a year later, around 60 of them came back to say the council needs to go farther to protect housing providers from becoming insolvent and to continue to attract investment in the city.
“It did very little to impact the crisis,” Dean Hunter, the CEO of D.C.’s Small Multifamily Owners Association, now says of last year’s bill. “Our economic vacancy is at record levels, couple that with the fact that possession cases are taking 18 months to two years. You see the harm. A landlord’s bills are still due, the mortgage is still due. We’ve devastated the industry.”
That bill — The RENTAL, or “Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants and Landlords,” Act — made it easier to secure an initial eviction hearing more quickly and reduced the initial notice period from 30 to 10 days.
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D.C. landlords testified this week advocating for two separate bills that would speed things up further. The Housing Investment Protection Act, heard by the housing committee on Thursday, would introduce a mandatory 60-day initial hearing period on lease violation cases. Another, heard by the judiciary and public safety committee on Wednesday, would make it easier to evict squatters from short-term housing. Landlords pushed for that to be expanded to include long-term housing, too.
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“I expect this to be a battle, and we’re going to win,” Hunter told The Washington Sun. “We got [the RENTAL Act] done, and we’re going to get this done.”
‘This is What a Death Spiral Looks Like’
During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts paused eviction cases if the tenant had submitted an application for emergency rental assistance. Landlords say that created a backlog of cases, and while those played out, they didn’t receive the rental money they rely on to pay their mortgage, utility bills or make basic repairs.
“Landlords go without important revenue that helps them send their kids to college, make mortgage payments or, in my case, pay for the round-the-clock home health aides to care for their elderly parents,” local landlord Kelly Brown testified at Thursday’s hearing.
Hunter surveyed 621 of his member landlords, finding that 70% of respondents reported that completed possession cases took at least a year, during which time very few tenants made regular rent payments.
For smaller landlords owning 10 or fewer units — who, Hunter asserts, make up 80% of property owners in the District — it’s left them holding the bag and selling their properties short of their value.
“We’re seeing losses to owners unlike anything we’ve seen before. My own family has invested in real estate for over 50 years in D.C., and we’ve stopped investing in multifamily properties,” testified Tim Dudley, an investor and property manager with Dudley Pro Realty.
A quicker initial hearing period would limit those losses, owners testified. It could also help tenants from falling so far behind in payments that they can’t hope to make their balance up, Hunter said.
“Many properties are falling further into disrepair as both financial conditions deteriorate and property management firms continue to exit the market,” testified Patrick McAnaney, development director of the Somerset Development Company. “Mission-oriented housing providers are selling off their properties to stay afloat. This is what a death spiral looks like.”
‘Evictions Should Be Rare and Fair’
But tenant advocates don’t think speeding up the eviction process will pull landlords out of that spiral. They argue that, a year out, the full effects of the RENTAL Act still haven’t been felt and that D.C.’s court system is so overburdened that adding to its load may slow down the eviction process even further.
“Setting deadlines for the court, while at the same time piling on new processes and opening the door to a flood of eviction filings, is not realistic in practice and certainly would not make things move faster,” testified Elena Bowers, the managing attorney of Legal Aid D.C.’s housing law unit.
Council member Brooke Pinto, who chairs the judiciary committee, emphasized that point in Thursday’s housing committee hearing.
“I want to note how frustrating it has been to see a Congress hold flat the funding for our courts over the last several years, even as we’ve seen a demand grow, and last year passed a budget that will lead to a $20 million reduction in our courts,” she said.
Attorneys and tenant advocates urged the council to steer away from passing another sweeping package of reforms and instead look to prevent eviction cases from being filed in the first place.
“Evictions should be rare and fair,” testified Maya Brennan, chief housing officer of the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development. “The changes we’ve seen over the past year appear to move us in the right direction. Cases are being heard, rulings are being made, protective orders are largely working. The court is working hard to address the backlog and to do so without returning to the days of no-show default judgments against tenants.”
Both the squatters bill and the Housing Investment Protection Act only received their first hearings, but the housing committee’s chair, Robert White, an at-large council member and D.C.’s Democratic nominee for congressional delegate, clearly signaled his position from the outset.
“While timelines may be slower than in years past, and we do have eviction issues, the District is completing evictions at a historically high level,” White said at Thursday’s hearing.
In the 2025 fiscal year, 2,614 evictions were completed, White said, compared to just 1,460 in 2016. The Senate, he added, confirmed six new D.C. Superior Court judges in August to fill long-standing vacancies. The idea that the District is not evicting residents for nonpayment of rent is a “false narrative,” White said.
Hunter called White a “tenant advocate.” He expects Pinto’s squatter bill to pass without too much struggle, but insists that landlords will push the Housing Investment Protection Act over the mountain, too.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “I will not hesitate to use every means at our disposal, including going to Congress and, if necessary, the Trump administration.”
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