Whether you’re a curious tenant, a city employee trying to issue a fine or an attorney looking to sue, there are many reasons you might want to know who owns a rental property in D.C.
In searching for an answer, good luck tracking down an actual human.
The city’s Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection collects information (on a newly revamped website) about who has a stake in the LLCs, nonprofits, co-ops and for-profit corporations that own housing in D.C. New York City may be the only other jurisdiction in the country that does so, Rebecca Janovich, DLCP’s superintendent of corporations, told The Washington Sun.
But because of how the law defines a “person,” sometimes that search just churns up another business entity. Advocates say that difficulty in determining who actually owns housing, and how much, is partly why it’s been so challenging to hold bad actors accountable, and why D.C.’s Department of Buildings is owed almost $87 million for unresolved code violations.
Trending
“I saw an example the other day: limited partnership, the beneficial owner listed as LLC. You go to the LLC, the beneficial owner is listed as an LLC. You go to that LLC, and finally you find an individual,” testified Beth Mellen, an assistant deputy attorney general for D.C., at an October housing committee hearing. “We support changes that would require those disclosures to get down to the natural person, so you don’t have to follow the chain.”
The DOB has signaled that it wants to more proactively perform housing inspections by grouping different aliases used by property owners, Keith Parsons, the department’s director of strategic enforcement, told The Sun. But advocates want to go further, and have DLCP require that a “natural person” be listed, with contact information, alongside each LLC in a public-facing registry.
“We need to have a sense of landlords’ full property portfolios, and so that once we know, ‘Oh, this landlord has bad practices,’ we want to be able to know all of the buildings in D.C. that they own, and then target our housing code enforcement accordingly,” Makenna Osborn, a senior attorney with the Children’s Law Center, told The Sun.
Sign up for The Washington Sun Metro newsletter for essential coverage of the D.C. region.
With a centralized registry, advocates hope that D.C. agencies can better perform “clean hands” certifications, ensuring that landlords receiving city business don’t owe fines and penalties under a different LLC. Currently, the DLCP issues these certifications by checking a separate database managed by the Office of Tax and Revenue.
“Our systems are not talking to each other,” Ward 5 council member Zachary Parker told The Sun. “There is a lack of clarity around the ‘clean hands’ process and whether or not there is a vetting of beneficial owners and any potential connection to properties with outstanding fines. … We have a system that essentially allows many landlords to go without enforcement or consequences.”
Though there’s no legislative proposal pushing for a comprehensive, public-facing registry yet, Parker said he’d most likely support creating one. He batted away the privacy concerns DLCP had raised at a previous housing committee hearing.
“There is a difference between legal protections, which is why one creates LLCs, and the public’s right to know who is doing business with the District and/or owning property,” he said. “There’s public information shared for a wide range of things, including court cases, right? We’re able to figure it out with the courts. I’m sure we can figure it out at DLCP.”
Not everyone is convinced that another registry is a vehicle for fixing poor housing conditions in the District. At another recent housing committee hearing, dozens of landlords said tenants’ sustained nonpayment of rent and a slow-marching eviction process is preventing them from injecting capital back into their properties.
“Another public registry is the tenant advocacy bureaucracy outdoing itself with another unnecessary burden, and it couldn’t come at the worst time,” said Dean Hunter, the CEO of D.C.’s Small Multifamily & Rental Owners Association. “We have a rent payment crisis that has deeply destabilized affordable housing. I believe we’re about six months away from a wave of affordable housing foreclosures.”
Advocates say it’s more of an enforcement issue than a burden. Since 2012, there’s been a D.C. law on the books requiring agencies to “maintain and access up-to-date records of outstanding fines, fees, penalties, interest, taxes, or other charges that may be owed by applicants for licenses or permits from the District government.”
That’s never happened, and until it does, “it will continue to be difficult to strategically and holistically hold the worst actors accountable,” Osborn said.
“There are a lot of people focused on this issue right now,” she said. “So hopefully there is momentum for really having a cross-agency, collaborative effort to have this be something that the government is focusing on.”
Author
