If the D.C. government was a romance novel, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs would be the troubled couple working its way through a lengthy, painful breakup.

But in real life, the will-they, won’t-they ends on Oct. 1.

That’s the deadline when the oft-criticized agency — which handles everything from construction permits and housing inspections to business licensing and consumer protection — will cease to exist, replaced instead by two slightly smaller agencies that proponents hope will be able to better focus on narrower missions.

The breakup was forced by the D.C. Council, which passed a bill in late 2020 splitting the agency in two — and did so over opposition and a veto from Mayor Muriel Bowser. Proponents led by Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said DCRA was too large and split among too many things at once: Critics of the agency said it had a spotty record of protecting tenants from bad housing conditions and enforcing consumer protection laws. Bowser, on the other hand, said the breakup was unnecessary, costly, and would derail her efforts to improve DCRA.

But with the law firmly in place, D.C. officials have spent the last year sketching out what will be the single biggest government reorganization in at least a decade. “Come Oct. 1, DCRA will no longer exist,” said Ernest Chrappah, DCRA’s director since 2019, during an online discussion in late July on the breakup. “It will be gone with the the wind.”

In its place will rise the Department of Buildings, which will focus on construction and housing, and the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, which will issue business and occupational licenses and enforce the city’s consumer protection laws. The two agencies combined will be bigger than what DCRA was in budget and size. In 2022, DCRA had a budget of $90 million and 500 employees; the Department of Buildings will have a $68.7 million budget and 400 employees for 2023, the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection will have a $37.7 million budget and 200 employees. (The two new agencies are looking to hire some 100 people. The D.C. government more broadly is also in the throes of a 1,000-person hiring spree.)

In an interview with DCist/WAMU, Chrappah said his focus is ensuring that the breakup is as smooth as possible, and that on Oct. 1 residents, builders, and businesses don’t even notice that it happened.

“The mayor is absolutely committed to a smooth transition to ensure that our residents are well-informed and they are well-served by DCRA and its successor agencies,” he said. “We’ve put our customers first and thought ahead about steps we can take to ensure that there’s going to be a smooth transition. So when somebody asks ‘what is going to happen to my permit,’ you are not going to lose the record. We’re transitioning smoothly. You are not going to have to create a new user ID and password. You will use your same login to access information from the buildings department or the licensing department.”

A new transition website created by DCRA details the new agencies’ responsibilities and organization charts; new logos have also been created. Though the agency is breaking up, its successors will be housed in same building in Southwest that DCRA currently occupies.

But will the two agencies be any better than DCRA was? Mendelson admits that he doesn’t know; he says he’s still waiting to see who Bowser appoints as directors of the agencies and whether they aggressively pursue their teams’ narrower missions. (The D.C. government is advertising for the two jobs.) He hopes the two agencies have a “new esprit de corps, a renewed sense of purpose.” Other proponents of the breakup say a clean separation is important — but not sufficient to achieve the goal of the council’s legislation.

“Having been reorganizations myself, my experience is that reorganizations don’t necessarily change anything,” said Chuck Elkins, a Ward 3 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and former federal government worker. “To their credit, DCRA is doing a super job in trying to make this a seamless transition. I think that’s great. But is it going to be any different? I would say it is wait and see.”

Kathy Zeisel, an attorney with the Children’s Law Center who backed the DCRA breakup, says she similarly shares the wait-and-see attitude. She says she’s encouraged that the Department of Buildings will have a brand new Office of Residential Inspection and Office of Strategic Code Enforcement, which she hopes will improve inspections and enforcement of the housing code. (DCRA has long been criticized for not aggressively pursuing bad landlords.) The council also increased the agency’s budget to hire more housing inspectors.

But Zeisel says she’d still like to see more of the city’s tenant protection functions placed in a single agency, instead of being split between a number of them. (The Department of Health, Department of Energy and Environment, and Department of Housing and Community Development also play roles in protecting tenants from poor housing conditions.)

“We’re optimistic that it’s a good first step,” she said. “We’re hoping that even more of the tenant pieces will be centralized into one agency. We just needed a tenant-focused agency, one whose mission is housing code enforcement.”

Ward 6 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Mark Eckenwiler says he expects the two agencies will experience some growing pains, but the proof as to whether they are better than DCRA was should be evident quickly enough.

“If there are hiccups in the initial few weeks, that will be understandable,” he said. “But I’m going to be looking to see how promptly they respond to things and how promptly they actually take action. It’s one thing to send me an email saying, ‘Yes, we’re looking at this.’ It’s another to go out and, you know, put a stop-work order on a site.”

Mendelson says he plans to keep pressure on the two new agencies; he’s scheduling an oversight roundtable in late September to check in on how the transition is progressing. The council will also gain some additional leverage over the two new agencies, as more of their senior-level positions will require their confirmation. As for Chrappah, who implemented a series of reforms at DCRA and had argued against the need to break up the agency to begin with, he says he sees the impending separation positively.

“As imperfect as the law is, we have an opportunity to make things better for our residents,” he said. “And now the bar is going to be much higher.”