Lawyers are supposed to aggressively advocate for their clients in the courtroom. But on the sidewalk outside City Hall?
That’s what happened on Tuesday afternoon, when a fight over a lawsuit brought by D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb against a prominent D.C. developer accused of neglecting to maintain a residential building played out in full public view, led by an unexpected protagonist: Karl Racine, Schwalb’s predecessor and opponent in the litigation.
Racine verbally sparred with tenants who said they had experienced horrid housing conditions, and took pictures of tenants and organizers as they spoke during a protest against the developer — drawing accusations that he was being rude and a bully.
One council member called the sidewalk showdown “stunning,” while a council source who spoke on the condition of anonymity was less diplomatic: “Unhinged.” Robert White, the at-large council member who chairs the housing committee, admitted it was a novel experience. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.
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Racine — who, during his own term as D.C. attorney general, filed high-profile lawsuits against landlords — said he was simply going to bat for a client he said was being unfairly maligned for systemic housing issues across the city.
“I will defend a client to the hilt, in a legal and ethical way, and nothing I did today was illegal nor unethical,” he said.
The sidewalk conflict stemmed from Schwalb’s lawsuit filed earlier this month against Buwa Binitie, a well-connected and seasoned developer who has leveraged millions of dollars in public subsidies to build affordable housing across D.C.
In the legal claim, Schwalb says Binitie and his management company neglected the Delta Pearl, a 166-unit building at the east end of H Street NE, resulting in some 200 unabated housing code violations and conditions he called “shocking.” Schwalb is asking a D.C. judge to order that immediate repairs be made to the building.
In court filings, Racine and Binitie have said that some tenants have caused damage to the building, and attempts to make repairs have been stymied by threats from squatters. They have also argued that a large number of tenants have not been paying their rent, leaving the building with a $1.8 million operating deficit. On Tuesday, Racine, now a partner at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, said there was evidence of an “organized, sustained effort to sabotage” the building.
“I know a slumlord case when I see one, and this isn’t that,” he said. “This is far more complicated.”
The tenants Racine engaged with, though, very much disagreed. They were holding a small news conference after wrapping up a lobbying day at the Wilson Building, where they met with lawmakers, pressing them to take action to combat bad housing conditions and to hold bad landlords accountable.
Nathan Hunter-El, an organizer with the tenant advocacy group Empower D.C., said he had formerly lived at Capitol Vista, another of Binitie’s buildings where there have been complaints of bad housing conditions.
“All these buildings are fucked up — you can excuse my French — and the tenants are suffering,” he said, while also explaining why some tenants have stopped paying rent. “Would you want to pay rent living in unhealthy and unsafe conditions?”
In 2021, in his final year as attorney general, Racine similarly recognized that D.C. law puts the onus on landlords to maintain their properties. “Our laws make clear that landlords and property managers have a legal responsibility to provide habitable living conditions to tenants,” he said at the time.
Racine said Tuesday that the situation with unpaid rent — and how it can affect a building’s financial sustainability — should require lawmakers to act. “I would argue the city council should be talking about what is necessary to ensure that these buildings get repaired,” he said.
White, who has passed bills to allow for speedier evictions, said that he understands that rent nonpayment remains a challenge for some landlords, which was especially true coming out of the pandemic. But he said that in some cases, that claim falls short.
“You are advertising luxury buildings, providing slum conditions, and claiming you can’t maintain the buildings because you have no money,” he told The Washington Sun. “And then we talk to [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] and find out they’ve given you millions of dollars, we look at District records and you get millions of dollars from there. The best-case scenario is you don’t know how to maintain your building, the worst-case scenario is you don’t want to do it.”
On top of the legal claims from Schwalb, Binitie is also facing a lawsuit brought by the co-owners of the Delta Pearl, who accuse him of “systematic mismanagement” of the building, including failures to make repairs and collect rent. A Virginia-based contractor is also suing his management company for not paying a $38,000 bill for repair work it did on the building.
Tenants and organizers are hoping to build political pressure against Binitie. They had asked lawmakers to reject a proposed land deal that would transfer a public parcel at the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus in Southeast to the developer. And they seemed to have succeeded: A planned hearing set for Wednesday to discuss the deal has been postponed.
Racine said he was just asking the council to hold off on casting judgement, political or otherwise, against Binitie until the legal process can play out.
“I ask everyone, including the members of the great D.C. Council, to hold their opinion in abeyance because guess what, there is a court process under way,” he said.
But even as the afternoon’s sparring came to an end, tenant organizers said they were rattled by his presence there.
“Both the level of direct intimidation and direct confrontation, and the fact that Karl Racine is a very public figure who has a reputation of litigating against slumlords,” said Farah Fosse of Empower D.C.
That fact also struck Starr Lindsay, a tenant of the Delta Pearl.
“You used to fight for people,” she told Racine.
“I still fight for people like you,” Racine replied. “I also represent clients who are honestly being accused of something that they are not guilty of. Don’t you think everybody deserves a day in court? We should just let the judge make the decision.”
The next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
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