People were encamped at the hotel, which was not an official shelter. Arlington County has condemned the building, saying it is unsafe for habitation.

“This is a real opportunity for businesses, for hotels to stand up and do the right thing,” said Gaurav Madan, an organizer with Sanctuary DMV.  

The lawsuit alleges that Marriott International, Inc has misled tens of thousands of D.C. consumers about the prices of their hotel rooms.

The official D.C. bird is the wood thrush. The official D.C. flower is the American Beauty Rose. And now, D.C. will have an official cocktail: the Rickey, joining Louisiana (the Sazerac) as the only other state place to have an official cocktail.

The D.C. Council has gone ahead and approved $206 million in public financing for a Marriott Marquis hotel adjacent to the Washington Convention Center, the Washington Business Journal reports. The key approval makes way for construction on the long-stalled development to finally begin, after the financing fell apart amid the current economic crisis. Construction could begin as early as next fall, says the BizJo. “We went from a 100 percent publicly financed hotel to a…