I'll one up this article. The amount that DCHA pays in rent is purely based on the number of bedrooms a unit has, whether the configuration of the unit makes sense or not. I've seen people buy 3 level rowhomes, make each level it's own unit and jam 3-4 bedrooms in each level to the point of there not even being living space. It's just a kitchen and 3-4 bedrooms in a ~800 sq/ft unit.

Since DCHA only cares about the bedroom count, they'll pay the same exact rate for this ridiculous apartment custom-designed to game their system than they will for say a standard ~2000 sq/ft 3-4 bedroom rowhome. Times that by 3 units in the former single family home, and the landlord is pulling in somewhere around $12-$15K/month depending on the property's subdivision. It's totally ridiculous.

There’s a flip by me that now has 9 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and is rented for almost $7,300 on a voucher. The market rent for that area for a townhouse that isn’t super huge would be more around $3,500 maybe. It has been off and on the market at 1.4M listed as an investor dream.

I'm finally moving out from a building in Cleveland Park under DARO/Borger management, who are well known for their relationship with the voucher program. They are the ones who recently got in a huge amount of trouble for more voucher misconduct. Props to WaPo for continuing to cover this so well. This new article does a good job of explaining the mechanism behind how landlords actually milk the program.

I could rant for hours about my experience living at the Parkway, but I don't want to dump a laundry list here of complaints and crazy stuff that we've seen or had to deal with. This building is nuts. We have incidents almost daily. However, people will use these problems as ammo to build prejudices against voucher recipients and disdain for the system as a whole, and I don't think that's fair. It's misdirected anger. After living in this building for years and learning so many of their stories, the voucher system has done a lot of good for a lot of people. It's a very flawed system; a good idea mired with flawed execution. And the solution to many of its problems is to further strengthen the system, not strip it of its utility.

After living here for 4 years, I've seen 2 main issues with the voucher program:

1. The city does not provide enough follow through and support for voucher residents. Flat out. Some of these people are coming in with severe mental health issues and drug/alcohol addictions. Some people are even coming in with very little personal belongings - no furniture, no place to sit, etc. These people need more help. They are not set up for success.

2. The landlords that so egregiously take advantage of the system (as outlined in the article) also need to follow through on handling the day-to-day incidents that arise from taking on so many individuals that may have severe problems. Not only that, they need to do a better job of dealing with the select few individuals who are a nexus from where an overwhelming majority of the problems stem from.

I think if landlords are going to try and cash in on the voucher system, then they need to step up and actually create a more safe & hospitable place for all residents, vouchers and non-vouchers alike. That in itself is where the greed lies. If landlords load up on voucher recipients to make extra money but then also have to pay a bunch for security, extra maintenance, etc., then their profit motive is diminished. They can make more money by caring less about the safety and living conditions, leading to the chaos that is notorious in some of these buildings.

Years of no oversight lead executive agencies to do shit like this unchecked for years. Where was Anita Bonds?

But in an interview for this article, Donald acknowledged the agency’s failure to properly assess rents has led to overpayments. She said her stance changed recently after talking with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials who issued a sweeping report in September, which flagged the problem alongside the agency’s failure to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing for its residents. The report depicts a housing authority in disarray and at risk of defaulting on its agreement with the federal government.

“We are going to fix all of this,” Donald said.

lol, lmao

the american dream is to figure out how to operate a marginally illegal scheme and get rich off of the suffering of poor people

The WP wrote @ this in articles re: Sedgewick Gardens back in 2019. Huge transfer of public $ into the hands of a few private landlords and management companies. Was discussed in hearings before Bonds back then too and at many community meetings. So much waste, fraud and abuse and probably kickbacks, too.

The level and impact of the disfunction here is staggering: Overpaying in some areas, causing working class families to be priced out of the market. Underpaying in others, causing unnecessary displacement. Not providing adequate services to people to ensure these buildings don't turn into slums.

Shameful work by the city, and great reporting by WaPo.

On a much less serious note, I had to do a double take when I saw that that woman's son was named River-Phoenix.

I lived in a rent controlled building in NE managed by a company listed in this article and am almost positive they were taking advantage of this program in the building I was in from 2018-2020. The building was recently renovated when I moved in, although I quickly learned that the renovations were done in a very sloppy manner.

After a couple of years, things really started to fall apart and tenants that moved in after renovations quickly moved out. I stuck it out through the end of 2020 when I noticed the type of tenant moving into the building started to rapidly change. A chain smoking drug user moved into the apartment across from mine and rapidly destroyed the apartment. Her behavior was so erratic that I called the social work crisis line a couple of times after she spent hours running up and down the hallway without any apparent purpose.

Anyways, by the time I gave notice, the management company was so eager for me to move out that the property manager told me to not worry about cleaning up the apartment and I would get a full return of my security deposit so long as no major appliances were missing. Based on the entirety of my experience with the property management company, I expected they’d screw me on the security deposit, but I wound up getting the entire amount mailed to me a few weeks after I moved out.

You guys are overestimating the “corruption” here. Used to work directly with DCHA. And if anybody knows anything about them, they are lazy af and absolutely do not work. Once the lease is in place they have no incentive to get off their asses and reassess any market rate properties. Sometimes they go months without sending funds and have to send 3 months worth of rent at once.

They’re getting the shit back in RE taxes anyways so they don’t give a shit.

Maybe the biggest news here is that WaPo is doing proper investigative reporting on local issues. This has been a long long time coming.

It is an absolute travesty that Anita Bonds was re-elected. Asleep at the wheel during a housing crisis.

The number of perverse incentives that landlords have to be as shitty as possible is out of control. I know it's bad here but it's like this in every city; at some point this country just decided to sell out to slumlords for some reason

This article doesn’t mention that housing authorities almost always pay a percentage above the Fair Market Rate set by HUD in order to encourage landlords to take voucher tenants, who tend to be seen as higher risk (even if that perception isn’t justified). IIRC, the last town I worked in Massachusetts was authorized to spend as much as 180% above the FMR. The article does make it sound like HUD isn’t happy with what the city is doing, but I don’t know if it’s accurate to suggest the practice of overpaying itself is something unique to the city (or necessarily against HUD rules). People with more federal housing experience, feel free to correct me if I’m off base.

how come no comments here are talking about (both tenant and landlord) complaints about behaviors of people who move in to these buildings and the subsequent destruction they cause

didn't the District use to do this with hotels, as well? Looks like they've leveled up.

This is absolutely disgusting. DCHA director should be fired immediately. If something like this can’t get DC residents on their feet I don’t know what can.

Here's the thing, landlords don't have to accept vouchers. They can give the middle finger to DC government and rent their apartment to people with money.

So you kinda have to overpay on units. DC might be going too high, but this is the problem with vouchers. Landlords need to accept them, and there is zero requirement for them to do so.

The complex I live in is currently going through the TOPA process and the fear from older white residents that this will happen in their buildings is real.

I have a very good friend who has a house in Capitol Hill. When his wife got posted to the state deparments foreign service they stated renting for around 3k a month. After 3 years they got the offer to have their home rented by a voucher recipient and are now getting $5k a month. Keep in mind this is on top of the money they get from the federal government to supplement their mortgage while they’re overseas AND they have free housing overseas in addition to the absurdly generous benefits of a federal employee in foreign service.

It’s a nice home and they’re providing a safe and clean place for a family to live so I don’t blame them for taking it, but it pisses me off that at the state and federal level, waste and lack of oversight are so rampant.

This is why I wish republicans would stop being a party of hate and counter identity politics and get back to addressing problems like this so the parties could balance each other out again.

>New yearly funding for housing vouchers and subsidies, cash support for low-income families, and increased pay for early childhood educators $ 161,000,000

Looks like if we follow the money, it may lead back to Brianne "crime doesn't exist" Nadeau.

If DC rent subsidies weren’t so generous, Landlords would have no incentive to rent their $800,000 properties to single mothers with bad credit and bad kids.

Disclaimer: This is highly speculative but it might explain things.

Ah, yes, Executive Director of District of Columbia Public Housing, Brenda Donald, looked as if she had just had a good cry at a recent public event. I could not put my finger on it, as this was a celebratory event, I kept thinking why would she look so sad. This article MIGHT explain why she had been crying: most likely the Mayor let her know the article was coming out and she would need to resign.

Referenced event can be seen here. Note: You can literally see she had been crying.

There was a similar story from NYC a year or two ago

If this is such an easy money making thing why aren’t more people doing it? Why is there a huge waiting list of people with section 8 vouchers and so few places available? There should be an abundance of places and a shortage of available voucher holders. That’s definitely not the case.

This is simply and purely corruption. The essence of the DC government.

[removed]

[removed]

empty the prisons, fill them with landlords

I don't think people recognize that landlords and developers are assuming the responsibility and risk of developing higher density housing as opposed to the city building exclusively low-income housing. It's better to blend people with low-income into the community so that they can benefit from the infrastructure and resources that come with a higher incoming earning population.

That's the whole reason DC's strategy is to get developers to offer a percentage of their housing as low income in exchange for grants and tax breaks. This even helps old people who owns homes cash out on the equity of their home and move into something they can afford.

You guys want DC to handle housing? They built a park in my neighborhood on land they already owned and they paid the contractors over half a million dollars for a simple playground. The ANC's wanted a million.

If you are a DC landlord you cannot discriminate on source of income, credit score, criminal history. Sure the rent is guaranteed but so long as they are under the HCVP. If you want to evict someone for non compliance in dc it takes about 6-12 months.

Complain as much as you want but their is a housing shortage in DC and I can tell you I rented a property and I would say about 90% of the inquiries were HCVP and there were about 200 inquiries. That's a ton of people on HCVP looking for homes and they are often looking for housing for 4 people or greater. HCVP also does not pay as much as market rates in the area. There are a ton of people looking for homes and only developers are willing to undertake the risk of HCVP because they have the scale to do it.

There's so much licensing crap you have to do just for 1 unit, if they made it easier and shortened the court process in case something adverse happens then more landlords will sign up for HCVP. Out of the 31,744 affordable units and 790 housing providers in HCVP there are only 227 providers with 1-2 units and only provide 322 units.

This is all cute, let's get cranky in the comments. How much would you all pay to keep the homeless off the streets? What is the acceptable cost of poverty?