Burst pipe causes massive flooding in the West building

After midnight last night, a pipe burst on the 10th or 11th floor of the West building of 3003, causing large-scale flooding all the way down to at least the 2nd floor.

Water poured through ceilings and walls of apartments below. Some residents reported water in their apartments several inches deep. Some electrical outlets crackled, raising concerns for safety. Water flooded some of the hallways and stairwells many floors below the burst pipe.

Residents alerted the front desk staff, who reported that an off-site maintenance team was at least an hour away. Someone set off a fire alarm. The water to the entire building was eventually shut off, but water continued to flood the lower floors for at least several hours.

See photos and video below.

Flooding on the 5th floor of the West building

Flooding on the G1 level of the West building

Flooding in a stairwell

Flooding in the hall of the 3rd floor of the West building

Flooding in one of the elevators

Flooding on the 3rd floor of the West building

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Tenant president testifies before DC Council on building security

Van Ness South Tenants Association president Harry Gural testified before the DC Council on Tuesday about chronically broken exterior doors at 3003 Van Ness. The testimony was part of a DC Council hearing on the SAFE Act, legislation developed by Attorney General Brian Schwalb designed to help increase building security in DC apartment buildings.

In his testimony, Gural told DC Councilmembers that calls by residents of 3003 Van Ness to 911 for help from the police have skyrocketed in recent months, with one or two calls per day. Other apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue have experienced similar increases in recent years, with calls from five to ten times higher than a few years ago.

Reading from actual 911 call data retrieved from the DC Office of Unified Communications, Gural said that in October 2024 alone, residents of 3003 Van Ness had called the police for a stabbing, assaults, theft, burglary, disorderly disturbance, domestic violence, and other incidents. In addition, in prior months, records show calls to the police for sexuall assault, aggravated assault, illegal firearms, drug dealing, overdoses, harrassment, stolen vehicles, and suspicious persons.

Gural’s written testimony including 31 pages of 911 calls, thumbnails of dozens of YouTube videos, as well as a March 2022 report by the tenant association, “Security Failures at 3003 Van Ness.”

Gural reported to Councilmembers that at the same time that there were these clear signs of high levels of criminal activity at 3003 Van Ness, building security remained extraoldinarily lax, with several exterior doors being broken at almost all times, allowing easy access to the building to non-residents. Even on the day of the hearing, video shows that there were four broken security doors at 3003 Van Ness.

Gural testified that he and other members of the tenant association had been recording video of these broken doors for more than two and a half years and have posted more than 80 such videos on the Van Ness South Tenants Association YouTube channel.

Dozens of other housing advocates joined Gural in supporting Attorney General’s Schalb’s SAFE Act, which is designed to put pressure on owners and managers of rental housing properties that do not take adequate steps to secure their buildings.

The SAFE Act will be reintroduced in January and will likely be voted on in the winter or spring.

Read Gural’s testimony, 911 data and other supporting documents

The tenant association encourages members who have an opinion about security at 3003 Van Ness or about the SAFE Act to add a comment below.

Fines against Equity Residential lowered from $1.2 million to $164 thousand

In August, we reported that the DC Department of Buildings (DOB) had levied $1,218,612 in fines on Equity Residential for almost 750 violations at 3003 Van Ness over the past three years. Updated data, which shows far less in fines, is now available.

The information was retrieved from the DOB’s SCOUT online data system and Landlord Violations Tool.

The fines were the result of the DOB’s "proactive inspection" of 3003 Van Ness, which was supposed to inspect the entire building. Sixteen months later, only a portion of the building has been inspected, but the exact percentage isn’t known.

It also isn’t clear that any of the $1.2 million in fines has been paid to date.

However, review of Department of Buildings online data for 3003 Van Ness as of Dec. 11th, 2024, shows that the amount has been lowered by more than $1 million to $164,492. It appears that the reason that the amount has dropped so precipitously is that, according to DOB, Equity Residential has fixed the violations that had been cited.

If that is correct, it means that Equity Residential will have paid little or nothing in fines for widespread violations of the housing code.

Moreover, it isn’t clear if Equity Residential has fixed housing code violations in the units that were not inspected by the Department of Buildings.

The Van Ness South Tenants Association will seek clarification from the Department of Buildings about its policy about housing code violations and fines.

Residents of 3003 Van Ness who want to find out if there are any outstanding fines for violations in their units can view the PDF file above or the identical Excel file below.

Download an easier-to-read Excel version of the current fines

Exterior security doors are still broken

On the same day (Dec. 10th) that the DC Council held a hearing on proposed legislation to strengthen security at apartment buildings, an informal inspection of security doors at 3003 Van Ness found that four security doors remain broken. The broken doors allow easy access to anyone outside the building to enter the underground garage, and from there to enter the apartment building.

The Van Ness South Tenants Association has been reporting and recording video of broken security doors at 3003 Van Ness for almost three years — more than 80 videos have been posted to VNSTA’s YouTube Channel.

On the same day that the four videos below recorded, the DC Department of Buildings reported that it inspected the doors at 3003 Van Ness that morning - but DOB found only one broken door. However, as the video shows clearly, at least four security doors at 3003 Van Ness were not functioning properly on December 10th, 2024.

The tenant association has reported these broken doors to Equity Residential many times in the past. It reported them to Equity again on Nov. 20th and then again today (Dec. 11th). Today, the tenant association submitted a request to DOB for an inspection of these doors.

Fire doors have not been repaired

The inspection of 3003 Van Ness by the DC Department of Buildings found that most doors to apartments lack a self-closing mechanism, which is necessary for fire safety.

This fire safety issue was reported by DOB inspectors, but it appears that only a few doors have been updated with a spring mechanism that would close the door automatically as the resident exits his or her apartment. This is necessary to slow the spread of fire in the case of an emergency.

The tenant association recently began an informal survey of residents to find out how many doors have been repaired. So far, 95% of respondents report that the doors have not been repaired.

It isn’t clear why Equity Residential is not addressing this fire safety issue.

High number of calls to police persist in October 2024

The high number of calls from residents of 3003 Van Ness for police assistance continued in October, including for assaults, a stabbing, disorderly conduct, verbal harassment, burglary and noise complaints.

Until about five years ago, 3003 Van Ness was a quiet building occupied mostly by seniors and young professionals. Very few calls from police assistance were made from the building. The number of such calls has skyrocketed in recent years, both at 3003 Van Ness and at other large apartment buildings along Connecticut Avenue. The Bowser administration has taken no action to address these issues.

VNSTA receives letter from DC police regarding security at 3003 Van Ness

The tenant association today received a letter from the DC Metropolitan Police Department, in which MPD stated that it had notified its Violent Crime Suppression Division about security problems at 3003 Van Ness.

The letter also stated that the building could be made security if Equity Residential were to share the video feeds from its security cameras with MPD’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC). MPD encourages the tenant association to ask Equity Residential to participate in the RTCC program.

Read the letter in print-friendly format at this link.

Tenant association presidents sends letter to Equity re: broken doors and Nuisance Abatement Act

Harry Gural, president of the Van Ness South Tenants Association, sent a letter today to Equity Residential general manager Dan Burkes, requesting again that the company repair all broken exterior security doors at 3003 Van Ness.

For years, the tenant association has complained to Equity Residential about poor building security at 3003 Van Ness. VNSTA wrote reports on poor security, wrote letters and emails to building management, and asked city officials for help. For more than two years, it recorded video evidence of broken exterior doors at the property, and broken doors leading from the underground garages to the main building.

Today’s letter is another attempt to get the attention of Equity Residential, a $27 billion company based in Chicago. The letter not only provides evidence of exceptionally poor security at 3003 Van Ness, it cites possible penalties for such failures in in buildings that have had problems with drugs, prostitution or firearms. Specifically, it quotes a section of the law which names penalties that a court can order for violating the law:

“Ordering all rental income from the property to be placed in an escrow account with the court for up to 90 days or until the drug-, firearm-, or prostitution-related nuisance is abated;”

“Ordering all rental income for the property transferred to a trustee, to be appointed by the court, who shall be empowered to use the rental income to make reasonable expenditures related to the property in order to abate the drug-, firearm-, or prostitution-related nuisance;”

The letter is cc’ed to senior Equity Residential management, as well as DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb, Department of Buildings Director Brian Hanlon, officers of the DC Metropolitan Police, members of the DC Council, and others.

Read the entire letter in print-friendly format.

Tenant association objects to invasion of privacy by Equity Residential "inspections"

The Van Ness South Tenant Association today sent a letter to Dan Burkes, general manager of Equity Residential’s apartment building at 3003 Van Ness, objecting to the company’s announced inspections of all units. Equity Residential has not disclosed the reason for such inspections, nor has it made provision to minimize inconveniencing residents or invading their privacy.

The letter begins:

Dear Mr. Burkes,

I have received dozens of emails from residents of 3003 Van Ness who have expressed their concern about Equity Residential’s announced plan to inspect all units in the building, without the permission of residents.

Residents have a right to privacy – their apartments are their homes. Equity’s sudden and unscheduled inspections are an invasion of that privacy. Residents have called this an “intrusion,” “unacceptable,” and “outrageous.”

Specifically, the letter requests that Equity Residential:

• Strictly abide by DC law regarding inspections.

• Announce to all residents the purpose of the inspections, as required by law.

• Provide at least 48 hours warning of inspections as required by law, including a statement of the first possible date of the inspection of a given unit and the last possible date.

• Mandate that an Equity Residential employee accompany any outside inspectors or potential buyers who enter apartment units.

• Order inspectors not to photograph personal belongings in units.

• Leave written notice after an inspection has been completed.

• In the case of residents who provide written notice objecting to an inspection, negotiate with the tenant a date and time that is convenient for him or her for an inspection to take place.

Read the entire letter in printer-friendly format.

Court finds that Equity Residential overcharged tenant president by almost $47,000 — orders restitution

The Office of Administrative hearings yesterday issued a final ruling in the case of Harry Gural v. Equity Residential / Smith Property Holdings Van Ness LP, ordering Equity Residential to VNSTA president Gural $46,798 plus $13,090 in interest — a total of $59,888.

Gural followed his complaint against Equity Residential in August 2016, claiming that the company was charging him $297 per month more than DC law allows in a rent-stabilized building. The increase demanded by Equity was almost 20%, whereas the maximum legal increase that year was only 3.5%.

The reason Gural filed his initial complaint in the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) is that almost 100 residents of 3003 Van Ness came to him asking for help fighting extremely large rent increase demands by Equity Residential, some almost as high as $1,500 per month. After much negotiation between those tenants and Equity, the company usually offered a large “discount” — which it called a “rent concession” — so that the actual rent increase would be much lower. However, the effective rent increase was often substantially higher than allowed by DC law.

Because so many residents and members of the tenant association reported such problems with the $27 billion Equity Residential, Gural refused to sign a new lease with a fraudulent, inflated amount listed as the “rent.” Equity subsequently filed suit against him in the Landlord and Tenant Branch of DC Superior Court, getting the judge to force Gural to pay $297 per month under a “protective order,” which (wrongfully) assumed that Equity’s argument was correct. Over the course of eight years, Gural has been forced to pay out of pocket $29,474 into court escrow.

The Office of Administrative hearings ruled in favor of Equity Residential in 2017, accepting the corporation’s novel interpretation of the word “rent,” which the company complained could exceed the actual rent paid by hundreds of dollars per month.

Gural appealed the OAH decision to the Rental Housing Commission, which in 2020 overturned the lower court decision, agreeing with Gural that the word “rent” has its plain English meaning. Specifically, “the Commission concluded that the phrase "rent charged" is intended to refer to the rent actually demanded or received from a tenant…”

The case moved slowly in 2020-22 with multiple delays due to the COVID pandemic. In 2023 and 2024, proceedings and filings came in a flurry as the date for another formal hearing in the Office of Administrative Hearing approached.

At a hearing in February 2024, Equity Residential property manager for 3003 Van Ness, Josh Luper, claimed that he did not know the meaning of the word “rent,” affirming Equity’s claim that the “rent” can exceed the amount paid by hundreds of dollars.

Even in its closing arguments for the case, Equity Residential claimed that it could not possibly have known the meaning of the word “rent.”

Finally, on August 28, 2024, the Administrative Law Judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings issued a final ruling in the case, finding that Equity Residential had overcharged Harry Gural — as he had claimed eight years ago. The judge ordered Equity Residential to pay Gural $46,798 for the overcharges, plus $13,090 in interest — a total of almost $60,000 ($59,888).

Given the thousands of hours and eight years that Gural has spent fighting Equity in court over the simple meaning of the word “rent,” a $60,000 award represents less than minimum wage.

Gural had argued that Equity’s overcharges were made in bad faith, which by DC law would mean that Equity would be compelled to pay him triple the amount of the overcharges. However, the judge ruled that Equity did not act in bad faith because she did not believe that it acted out of “sinister motives” or the “intent to deceive or defraud.” Gural had pointed out in his rebuttal to Equity Residential’s final arguments that it is extremely unlikely that a $27 billion Real Estate Investment Trust, a Fortune 500 company with upscale properties in major cities around the United States, did not know the meaning of the word “rent.”

Furthermore, he has pointed out that Equity Residential continued to overcharge him despite losing three court cases on the rent issue, including the DC Attorney General’s case, District of Columbia vs. Equity Residential Management, which forced Equity Residential to pay $1 million in restitution to residents of 3003 Van Ness.

Either party in Harry Gural v. Equity Residential may appeal the OAH decision within 10 business days of the date of the August 28th final ruling.

See a chronology of the entire case at this link.