I’ve been getting a rather large volume of email asking for an update on the Shiloh Baptist Church properties I posted about every day for a week back in May. As you’ll recall, the city condemned four properties on 9th St. NW owned by Shiloh Baptist Church, and ordered them to complete repairs on the buildings by a date certain (we originally estimated the date being May 31, but it turned out they were only counting business days, so the actual deadline was June 5). These properties have been neglected for decades and a source of great frustration for the Shaw neighborhood, due to their unsafe, unsanitary conditions.

To date, four days past the official deadline set by the city for repair work to be completed, no work has even started despite promises to comply by the church leadership. Mayor Fenty has said that should Shiloh fail to complete the required repairs, he would order the work done and place on a lien on the properties to force the church to pay for them. DCRA spokesperson Karyn-Siobhan Robinson tells us that as of today, no action has been taken on the properties, but that the D.C. Board for the Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings will hold its regular semi-monthly meeting at DCRA this Wednesday, June 13, and the Shiloh properties are on the agenda. We’ll be sure to update on Thursday when we know what happened at the meeting.