After child deaths, ANCs press DC Council for apartment safety hearing

Connecticut House apartments, at 4500 Connecticut Avenue (Google Street View image)

by Marlene Berlin

Three advisory neighborhood commissions are urging the DC Council to use its oversight responsibility to address community concerns about apartment safety, and speak to the community’s outrage over the recent deaths of two young children connected to Connecticut Avenue buildings.

Dozens of apartment buildings are within the boundaries of ANCs 3F, 3C and 3/4G, which have requested a joint hearing of the Council Committees on Housing, Health, and Facilities and Family Services.

Safety issues in these and other multifamily buildings across the District have been brewing for years. In this neighborhood, however, the calls for action from the mayor’s office, DC agencies and the DC Council have grown louder since the deaths in late September and early October of an infant and a five-year-old. The one-year-old’s death, connected to Sedgwick Gardens, was ruled a homicide. The father of the five-year-old, a resident of Connecticut House, has been charged with cruelty to a child.

On October 28th, ANC 3F hosted a special meeting about the hearing request with commissioners from 3C and 3/4G.

Also in attendance: Ward 3 Council member Matt Frumin, Department of Human Services Chief of Staff David Ross, and Tawana Holland, another DHS official.

Some attendees, including Frumin, raised the ongoing issue of renters in DC voucher programs (such as DHS’s Permanent Supportive Housing for the chronically homeless) that include behavioral health and other services, but require more supervision and assistance from case managers than they are getting.

“It’s critical that we find housing for people who need housing and that we provide support for people who need support, and we all share that as a goal,” Frumin said. “And yet we have programs that are designed to do that – that aren’t succeeding at doing that – in the way that I think anyone would hope.”

And referring to the deaths of the two children, Frumin said: “I think everyone in earshot felt like, ‘Isn’t there something more we could do?’ And folks are trying to figure out what to do in this space.”

DHS’s Ross and Holland reiterated many times that they are constrained by law and cannot require services when a recipient does not want them. When pressed about what tenants should do when they see dangerous and lease-violating behavior, Holland was very clear that this is the purview of the police and building managers, not DHS.

The Office of the Attorney General, separately, is proposing changes to DC’s nuisance buildings law. The OAG-authored legislation would allow the attorney general to sue landlords who do not follow police recommendations to improve the safety and security of their apartment buildings. Fruman said anyone with an interest in these issues is encouraged to testify at an upcoming hearing on the SAFE Act. Frumin’s legislative director, Conrad Risher, tells Forest Hills Connection the hearing will be held on December 10th.