Local events from our community calendar and beyond:
Be informed. Northwest Neighbors Village, headquartered at Forest Hills Senior Living, hosts a speaker series that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home. Upcoming talks include Native American symbols as sports mascots (November 2nd), DC’s racial wealth gap (November 7th), and the Israel-Hamas war (November 9th). Learn more about the speaker series and view recordings of past talks here.
Help plant Connecticut Avenue’s fall garden. Volunteers of all ages and abilities are welcome to join Master Gardener Kathy Sykes and Van Ness Main Street in planting fall blooms and spring bulbs in the Connecticut Avenue pollinator gardens. The plantings are taking place most Saturdays and Sundays this month, from 2 to 4 p.m. Find the dates and tentative locations here. And email Kathy ([email protected]) with “Pollinator Planting” in the subject line, the dates you are available, and your cell phone number so she can alert you to any weather-related cancellations.
Our local Master Gardener will tell you about how native plants feed and sustain native wildlife. Pulling up non-native invasive plants is another important part of the equation. Which brings us to:
Weeding and replanting the Rock Creek Park “mini-oases.” Rock Creek Conservancy established six of these demonstration areas four years ago, and in that time, “has achieved something remarkable”: less than five percent of the oasis surface area is covered by invasive plants. That achievement is possible and is being sustained through the work of the conservancy, certified Weed Warriors, and volunteers who work under their guidance. And the Rock Creek Conservancy calendar has invasive removal and native planting events at nearby oases and other locations throughout the month.
Shop small and local for the holidays. You’ve heard of Small Business Saturday? We have a walking tour/guide for that. Tenley WinterFest also kicks off the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Hillwood Museum is participating in Museum Shop Sunday, with specials throughout the long holiday weekend.
And, save the date for the Van Ness Main Street holiday pop-up market on Saturday, December 2nd.
Forest Hills Connection is an editorially independent program of Van Ness Main Street.
Green Eyeshades says
After all the noise and disinformation for the past two years about the effect of DCHA housing choice vouchers on apartment renters in our neighborhood, it turns out the biggest cheaters and rent gougers are probably the giant corporate landlords which operate the biggest apartment buildings in the District.
This is breaking on DCist and City Paper, haven’t seen it on Washington Post yet: DC’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against 14 District landlords for price fixing. The District’s federal court case names AvalonBay and 13 other landlords renting out giant apartment buildings, including most of the part of Connecticut Avenue that runs through our neighborhood:
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/635070/schwalb-claims-a-tech-company-and-14-of-d-c-s-largest-landlords-colluded-to-fix-rent-prices-in-new-antitrust-lawsuit/
https://dcist.com/story/23/11/01/dc-attorney-general-lawsuit-landlords-realpage/
These are the primary locations of the defendants, and a complete list, according to DCist:
“Many of the apartments whose rental prices were determined by this software – primarily large, 50+ unit multifamily buildings – are clustered along Connecticut Avenue in Northwest D.C., 14th Street from Columbia Heights to Shaw, and in NoMa and Navy Yard.” [snip]
“Defendants named in the suit include Avenue5 Residential, LLC; AvalonBay Communities, Inc.; Bell Partners, Inc.; Bozzuto Management Company; Camden Summit Partnership L.P.; Equity Residential; Gables Residential Services, Inc.; GREP Atlantic, LLC; Highmark Residential, LLC; JBG Smith Properties, LP; Mid-America Apartments, LP; Paradigm Management II, LP; UDR, Inc.; and William C. Smith & Co., Inc.
“These landlords collectively represent more than 58,000 of the available multifamily housing units in D.C.” [snip]
“In total, Schwalb’s staff calculated that RealPage’s software was used to set rent prices at more than 40,000 apartments across D.C. – nearly one out of five of the 210,000 total rental apartments in the city – and about 60% of all the units in large, 50-plus unit multifamily buildings. Across the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro area, more than 90% of the units in large buildings are priced using RealPage’s RM software.”
Green Eyeshades says
After my first comment on this main blogpost, the Washington Post published a story at 2:40 pm on the new antitrust lawsuit filed by DC’s Attorney General against major landlords in the District and the software vendor they used to collude on rents, that is, to fix prices in the market for rental housing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/01/dc-sues-realpage-landlords/
The initial story from the Post does not mention the names of any of the landlords who were sued, which seems bizarre to me. Let’s hope the Post updates its story with more complete information soon.
New information in the Post story includes these paragraphs at the end:
“The suit said that RealPage’s software has been adopted by a ‘substantial portion’ of the multifamily housing market nationwide, including around 60 percent of units in large, multifamily buildings in the District.
“The suit included a map of properties that showed alleged ‘increased concentration’ of the software’s use in particular neighborhoods, including Columbia Heights, NoMa and Navy Yard, and buildings along Connecticut Avenue in upper Northwest.
” ‘As a practical matter, this leaves many District residents with no choice but to pay RealPage’s inflated rents,’ the suit said.
“Landlords also profited from the scheme, which sometimes incentivized leaving some units vacant to maximize return, the suit said.
” ‘The net effect of driving revenue and pushing people out was $10 million in income,’ one executive quoted in the suit said. ‘I think that shows keeping the heads in the beds above all else is not always the best strategy.’
“The rents RealPage comes up with ‘are not recommendations,’ the suit alleged. ‘Participating Landlords agree to and do impose the RealPage-generated rents nearly all of the time.’
“In a statement, Elena Bowers, supervising attorney in the housing unit at Legal Aid DC, said the District for years has felt the impact of the ‘harmful practices’ the lawsuit alleges. Those affected are disproportionately Black and Brown residents, the statement said.
” ‘We hope AG Schwalb’s lawsuit will hold these landlords accountable and force them to change their deceitful practices going forward,’ the statement said. ‘While this lawsuit is an important step, Legal Aid urges the District to prioritize the creation of more affordable housing and to expand supports for residents struggling to afford to stay in their homes, especially as we approach the winter months.’ “
Green Eyeshades says
One fact the Post added is that DC’s Attorney General filed the antitrust case in DC Superior Court, not U.S. District Court, so technically the case may not be a “federal” antitrust case:
“The suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, said landlords agreed to use RealPage’s centralized system, which suggests rental prices based on supply and demand, rather than compete against one another. In addition, the suit said, landlords agreed to provide ‘competitively sensitive data’ to RealPage for use in its software, a violation of D.C. antitrust law.
“More than 50,000 units in the District were affected, according [to] the suit, bringing ‘millions in wrongfully inflated rents in the last four years alone.’ “
Green Eyeshades says
The antitrust case filed by DC’s Attorney General against RealPage, Inc. and 14 landlords was not docketed until today. Here is the DC Superior Court docket sheet:
https://portal-dc.tylertech.cloud/app/RegisterOfActions/#/A49086101F17A3913D13D9EF7792AFCE746D80AC5FF8355F6EC7D10293D3617F/anon/portalembed
Despite its suspicious appearance, that is indeed a fixed page in DC Superior Court’s new public “cloud” database for court cases. I was able to download the PDF file for the full complaint (47 pages, 1.3 MB). But it’s a roundabout path to figure out where to click for downloads.
Explaining how the search tools work would take all day, but here is the home page for the Portal:
https://portal-dc.tylertech.cloud/Portal