The apartment building at 4500 Connecticut Avenue will be under new management as of the new year.
On Monday, November 28th, Connecticut House residents received this welcome letter from Borger Management.
It is our pleasure to announce that Borger Management, Inc. has been appointed the Managing Agent for Connecticut House, LLC effective 1/1/23. We are excited about this opportunity to provide you with our professional management services; and we are proud to add your community to our select portfolio of residential properties….
The notice is the result of a settlement between the DC attorney general and DARO, the owner of Connecticut House and about a dozen other DC apartment buildings. The settlement, announced on October 20th, barred DARO from managing its own properties, and gave the company 18 months to transition management to a third party. That third party is Borger, in this case.
The Borger letter to Connecticut House residents did not mention the settlement, nor did it acknowledge the building’s longtime issues with security, trash, noise, and numerous police and fire department visits. Last spring, the Metropolitan Police Department referred the building to the Office of the Attorney General’s nuisance buildings division.
Just up the street, at 4545 Connecticut Avenue, is a Borger property with a history of similar problems: the Brandywine Apartments.
A year ago, the Brandywine Apartments Tenants Association president provided Forest Hills Connection with an update on that building’s issues. Back then, David Luria said, it was getting better. The tenants association had been meeting monthly with the police, and Borger responded to their demands for 24-hour security and new managers who were more responsive to tenant concerns.
With the change of Connecticut House’s management in mind, I contacted Luria again. His response: Livability has once again degraded. Police visits to the Brandywine increased by 35 percent over the past year to average 16.4 per month. That’s every other day, and more than triple the average in 2016. Luria said most of these incidents involve domestic disputes, mental health and drug abuse issues, and noise, but each incident rarely rises to the level of a crime.
The Brandywine tenants association gets copied on complaints from residents about issues including:
- Dog urine and feces on carpets
- Persistent marijuana fumes
- Mold in the walls near the laundry room
- Noise disturbances at all hours
- An increase in rodent and insect infestations
- Lack of accessibility, including parking, for residents with disabilities
Luria said the Brandywine Apartments has long been understaffed for a building of ten floors, 305 units and 500 residents, taking up half a city block. In 2018, Borger eliminated the position of an in-house assistant manager who lived in the building. Although the on-site manager is responsive, no one is available to seek out and respond to issues between the hours of 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. Also, the 24-hour security has been reduced to 8 to 12 hours, depending on the day.
Luria said he feels that the residents, who are paying $1,900 to $4,500 per month for their apartments, deserve better.
Green Eyeshades says
The main blogpost includes this paragraph:
“With the change of Connecticut House’s management in mind, I contacted Luria again. His response: Livability has once again degraded. Police visits to the Brandywine increased by 35 percent over the past year to average 16.4 per month. That’s every other day, and more than triple the average in 2016. Luria said most of these incidents involve domestic disputes, mental health and drug abuse issues, and noise, but each incident rarely rises to the level of a crime.”
I am sad to hear that livability at the Brandywine “has once again degraded.” The tenants’ association there has demonstrated greater power and influence than tenants’ associations at other buildings in our neighborhood. So if even the Brandywine tenants’ association can’t prevent “degraded” living conditions, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Green Eyeshades says
Where in the World is Wayne Turnage? Why has he abandoned tenants’ associations like the one at the Brandywine where tenants are again suffering “degraded” living conditions?
Deputy Mayor Turnage attended a public meeting of ANC3F in July 2022, less than five months ago.
See Connection blogpost dated August 31, 2022 here:
https://www.foresthillsconnection.com/home-front/turnage-anc/
The Connection reported on August 31, less than four months ago, as follows:
“The DC deputy mayor charged with overseeing coordination between DC agencies that work on homelessness and behavioral health said in July that the District was creating a communication portal that apartment landlords and residents could use to request services for disruptive tenants.
“Wayne Turnage and a staff member suggested at the July 19th ANC 3F meeting that the portal was a week or two from launch. The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services has not responded to our request for confirmation that the portal has since been activated, and some Ward 3 tenants advocates tell us they’ve heard nothing further about the portal since that meeting.
“The portal, Turnage explained, would be a place where ‘residents and landlords can immediately send to my team complaints about existing problems in virtually in real time. We then will use that information to get the appropriate agency out to the site to see if the issue can be addressed.’
“Turnage and his staffer, Ciana Creighton, stressed that the portal would not replace 911 calls for emergencies. However, it was not clear how the portal would differ from DC’s two behavioral health hotlines for reporting crisis situations involving people with mental health and addiction issues.
“Turnage did not critique the District’s crisis response, as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Chris Geldart did at another ANC 3F meeting. In April, Geldart said the rental housing vouchers system, as currently administered, was not working due to a mismatch of services promised and services provided to recipients in need of aid beyond rent assistance. Turnage instead spoke of a ‘perception’ among residents that ‘the city’s response is not timely enough or not sufficient to remediate the problem.’ But like Geldart, Turnage had been meeting with landlords of apartment buildings that had been dealing with ‘a small number [of]… impactfully disruptive residents who sometimes struggle with the adjustment to housing.’
“The portal was described as a short-term solution. In the long term, Turnage said his office was working with the mayor and city administrator on developing a new housing model, in which drug addiction and mental health services would be provided on site, 24/7. Such housing would create economies of scale, he said, and make it easier to provide services quickly. He also commented on the difficulty of serving clients ‘scattered’ in housing around the District ‘when somebody spirals downward at three o’clock in the morning, in a building that is not completely voucher-based and there is… no case manager immediately available.’ ” [snip]
The fourth paragraph in that August 31 blogpost on the Connection highlighted the words “behavioral health hotlines,” and provided this link to information about those hotlines which was, in fact, a blogpost in the Connection from March 2022:
https://www.foresthillsconnection.com/news/who-to-call-when-you-see-someone-in-crisis/
Wayne Turnage is now missing in action less than five months after promising ANC3F that he would take actions to support voucher users in apartment buildings in our neighborhood and to alleviate habitability issues for tenants who do not use vouchers to pay some or all of their rent. The Bowser administration just does not care about apartment dwellers in our neighborhood, however they pay their rent.