Update: The D.C. Council voted in favor of a bill Tuesday that lets landlords evict tenants deemed a physical risk to their neighbors, the first loosening of the city’s eviction moratorium that was established at the start of the pandemic.

Under the legislation, tenants could not be evicted unless a judge finds them guilty of threatening behavior including unlawful possession of a firearm and assault. The bill passed 12-1 ( Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George was the lone dissenting vote). As it was an emergency vote, it will next go directly to Mayor Muriel Bowser’s desk.

A second bill proposed by Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto that would allow landlords to immediately raise rent for tenants who have not qualified for unemployment benefits, or experienced other financial hardship due to the pandemic, was narrowly defeated in a 7-6 vote.

This update was corrected to reflect that the eviction legislation doesn’t need a second vote because it is emergency legislation. 

Original:

More than a year after enacting a sweeping ban on District-wide evictions, D.C. lawmakers are considering whittling down the city’s eviction moratorium.

The D.C. Council is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill from Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At Large) that would allow landlords to file eviction suits against tenants who present “a current and substantial threat” to their neighbors, household members, and building staff.

Under the current ban — in effect through at least July 20 — landlords in the city can’t evict anyone for any reason during the coronavirus pandemic. The rules are looser in Maryland and Virginia.

D.C. landlords have sought the exception for months, saying they need a legal way to evict the small minority of renters who pose a health and safety risk.

“As the pandemic has gone on, we’ve started to hear our housing providers tell us they’re getting a lot more complaints from tenants” about troubling resident behavior, says Randi Marshall, Vice President of Government Affairs with the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington, which lobbies the Council on behalf of large property owners and managers. “Before, it was noise complaints, because everyone’s working from home, which was to be expected. Now, they’re saying there are a ton of incidents happening — violence, drug sales.”

D.C. landlord Keith Carr told The Washington Post he was assaulted by a young man who had begun hanging around the building after a tenant died and her grandson took over her apartment. He had no legal way of removing the man from his building while the eviction moratorium was in effect, Carr said.

“You are responsible for his injuries,” Dean Hunter, the founder of a lobbying group that represents the city’s small landlords, wrote in an email to D.C. councilmembers last month.

But it’s not clear whether Bonds’ bill, as written, would have helped the landlord remove the man from the property — the legislation could be interpreted as only applying to tenants, not squatters.

Opening up evictions for public safety reasons is one of several recommendations made by the Rental Housing Strike Force that Mayor Muriel Bowser assembled earlier this year to concoct policy solutions to landlord/tenant issues brought on by the pandemic. But advocates for the city’s lowest-income residents say that task force is stacked against renters.

“The strike force has few tenant voices. No tenants themselves have actively participated … so take their recommendations in that light,” said Beth Mellen, a supervising attorney in the Housing Law Unit at D.C. Legal Aid.

Legal Aid opposes Bonds’ bill, but Mellen acknowledges that the legislation is crafted narrowly enough that it’s unlikely to lead to many evictions during the health emergency, if it passes.

“We will have to see how landlords use it,” Mellen says. “Certainly if landlords abuse it in any way, we will be monitoring that and potentially coming back to the Council to ask for changes.”

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson expressed confidence during a press briefing on Monday that the bill would capture the nine votes it needs to pass. The city’s current eviction ban is “not nuanced,” he said, and it was crafted during a time when the Council believed the pandemic would come and go relatively quickly.

Now, more than a year has passed, and landlords understandably want more access to the court system, Mendelson said.

“It’s pretty hard to argue that a person who is breaking the law and endangering neighbors cannot be evicted,” he added.