D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine is suing the city’s housing authority over conditions at 10 of its properties, alleging that the agency has been “refusing to address systematic drug-and firearm-related activity” at the properties, where more than 5,000 D.C. residents live.

As a result, the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) says it will launch an internal investigation into its response, and pledged to work with the OAG to solve the matters highlighted in the suit.

DCHA serves as the landlord for more than 20,000 residents of the city’s public housing, across 56 properties. The lawsuit from Racine’s office focuses on the following properties:

• James Creek Apartments
• Syphax Gardens Apartments
• Langston Terrace and Additions
• LeDroit Apartments and Kelly Miller Apartments
• Kenilworth Courts Apartments
• Lincoln Heights Apartments
• Richardson Dwellings Apartments
• Stoddert Terrace Apartments
• Benning Terrace Apartments
• Public housing in the neighborhood formerly known as Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg

“These properties have been the site of ongoing drug- and firearm-related nuisance activities for years, including multiple homicides, the regular execution of search warrants, and seizures of drugs, drug paraphernalia, firearms, and other firearm-related devices,” says the suit. “The tenants of these properties who are not involved in these nuisance activities are impacted severely by the continual risk to their safety, having to walk to local grocery stores, churches, and schools under constant, warranted fear that they will be the victim of drug-related violence.”

The suit claims that the city reached out to DCHA repeatedly about problems with drugs and guns and made suggestions about safety improvements, but DCHA “has failed to respond or engage meaningfully with the District on these matters.”

“The filing indicates that the Attorney General’s office failed to receive timely and complete cooperation on several of these matters during the course of their planning and discovery,” wrote DCHA in a response to the lawsuit. “If true, this is completely unacceptable behavior from DCHA staff.”

DCHA said it would launch an internal investigation and work with the OAG to “rectify the issues raised within today’s filing,” but the agency also questioned whether a lawsuit was the proper way to go about solving the problems with safety on its properties.

“While we understand why the Office of the Attorney General has pursued this approach, we believe that the time and financial resources that will be expended to respond to this litigation would be best used to support the measures that this suit seeks to remedy,” the agency wrote.

The debate about policing

The lawsuit asks that DCHA be required to implement immediate reforms to its security process. Racine’s office suggests that these changes could include increasing the number of D.C. Housing Authority Police or Special Police Officers at the properties, increasing the use of security cameras, using more high-wattage lights and maintaining those lights, enforcing rules about criminal activity on properties and improving the communication between D.C. Housing Authority Police and the Metropolitan Police Department.

The suit also asks that the court order the Housing Authority to pay damages of at least $150 for every day since they were first provided notice of the nuisance activity. The OAG filing says the office first met with DCHA’s General Counsel to discuss resident concerns about criminal activity on May 31, 2019.

Amanda Korber, a supervising attorney in D.C. Legal Aid’s housing law unit, voiced some concern about the recommendations in the OAG’s filing, especially given ongoing demands from community activists to divest from policing and invest in other community programs and community-based solutions to violence and crime.

“A natural response to this lawsuit seems to be more police, and this is a moment when we’re hearing people say that that’s exactly what they don’t want,” Korber said. “I just hope that OAG was thinking about that when it filed this, and thinking about how it’s going to make sure that an increase in police and an increase in over-policing isn’t the result.”

Korber also voiced concern that one “downstream effect” of the lawsuit could be increased evictions from public housing. The federal “one-strike” law that allows public housing residents to get evicted because of criminal activity of someone in their household is “already pretty draconian,” Korber said.

“DCHA already uses this law in ways that hurt public housing residents,” said Korber.

A state of disrepair

Korber was also disappointed that the Attorney General’s lawsuit focused on drug and firearm-related activity, and not on other ongoing and extensive environmental hazards faced by public housing residents.

Public housing residents in D.C. deal with lead contamination, mold exposure, infestations of vermin, and serious problems with plumbing and other infrastructure. These conditions have been making residents sick.

A spokesperson for the OAG said the office hopes to “continue working with the agency to address other complaints from tenants and community members,” but was focused right now on “the urgent need to make sure residents are protected from dangerous illegal activity in and around their homes.”

On the matter of repairs, DCHA has estimated that it would take $2.2 billion in funds over the next 17 years to get the city’s public housing stock in suitable condition. And while the D.C. Council has allocated some money towards repairs, the funding this year will only help 400 of the 2,600 units the Housing Authority identified as needing “extremely urgent” repairs.

As a result, DCHA said it had no choice but to move forward with a plan that would gut or demolish 10 public housing properties and then use private equity to help redevelop them as mixed-income properties. The agency has said current residents will be able to return to those properties once renovation or reconstruction is complete. And in its response to the OAG’s lawsuit on Tuesday, the agency said its renovation plan includes significant upgrades to lighting and security cameras that will “move our systems into the next realm of technology necessary to deter criminal activity.”

There is overlap between the properties with the most serious structural and environmental problems and the properties that the OAG’s lawsuit focuses on. For example, under DCHA’s current plans for addressing conditions at its most troubled properties, parts of the Stoddert Terrace property will be demolished, and so will parts of the Ledroit and Kelly Miller apartments. Benning Terrace and Langston Terrace (which is included on the National Register of Historic Places) will also be gutted and given significant renovations under DCHA’s plans, which will take years to complete.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed budget allocates an additional $40 million for public housing repairs over the next two fiscal years, and an additional $36 million dollars for the New Communities Initiative, an ongoing D.C. government plan to overhaul several public housing properties.

But this is less than the recurring line-budget item of $60 million per year that advocates, including D.C. Legal Aid and the Fair Budget Coalition, have been asking the city to invest in public repairs.

“We hope that the Council is still looking into that, and looking to find money for those repairs,” Korber said.