Last week the District of Columbia’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs sent out letters to over 125 landlords operating in the neighborhoods surrounding Georgetown University who are suspected of operating without proper business licenses, notifying them that they will face legal consequences if they do not submit to inspections.
The effort is part of DCRA’s “This Should Be Illegal” campaign, which began in 2008 and aims to ensure that landlords are complying with mandatory safety inspections for their properties and that college students are not living in dangerous conditions.
Letters from DCRA were postmarked between Jan. 20 and Jan. 22, and landlords will have until Feb. 5 to voluntarily apply for business licenses and undergo property inspections.
“The big thing with these properties is voluntary compliance,” DCRA spokesman Mike Rupert (GRD `09) said. “If they come in and get their permits and get their inspections scheduled, that’s ideal, when people do the right thing. If not, we do an investigation into the property.”
Rupert explained that it is pretty easy for inspectors to determine what is happening at rental properties after talking to the residents, leading the agency to develop files on rental properties. Fines between $500 and $4,000 can be issued to landlords who remain incompliant. Legal action against landlords is taken only as a final step, according to Rupert.
“The big thing is, we don’t want to displace students,” Rupert added. “We want to make sure they’re safe … We encourage students and empower them with information to say to their landlord, ‘Hey man, is this safe?’”
Georgetown’s Off Campus Student Life office attempts to steer students to licensed landlords by checking all listings on their website and ensure landlords advertising there have a basic operating license, according to Director Anne Koester.
Rupert, a recent Georgetown graduate, highlighted the importance of safety inspections, pointing to the death of student Daniel Rigby (MSB `05), who was killed in a fire in an unlicensed rental property on Prospect Street in 2004.
“As you know, five years ago in Georgetown there was a big fire in an unlicensed home and Daniel Rigby died,” Rupert said. “If that home had been inspected, we would have seen some of the issues that led to his unfortunate death.”
