KWRA News - Washington Post Article

The Old Lady of the Avenue has a bad case of heartburn.

A group of tenants at the Old Lady, a nickname for the venerable
Kennedy-Warren apartment building in Northwest Washington, has gone on strike, refusing to pay a $233 monthly renovation surcharge that went into effect at the first of the year. It is the first large-scale rent strike of its kind in the city, officials said.

The tenants at the art deco building, next to the National Zoo on Connecticut Avenue, contend that its owner, Bethesda-based B.F. Saul Co., is gutting the building's character, gouging tenants for renovation costs and violating rent control laws.

"They've made it clear that the people who live here now are not welcome," said Peter Schwartz vice president of the Kennedy-Warren Residents' Association. Representatives of the company did not return calls seeking comment.

The dispute involves the future of one of Washington's most famous addresses, a building once home to Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, before they moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The property, named for original owners Edgar S. Kennedy and Monroe Warren Sr., opened in 1931 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building has a historic wing and a tower that opened in 2004. The tenant association is fighting to keep some units in the old wing moderately priced; the tower is not subject to rent control, and rents there range from $2,500 to more than $8,000. Many of those units are rented as corporate apartments, tenants said.

"There's often a perception that Connecticut Avenue people have oodles of money," said Schwartz, 29, who works for the Federal Railroad Administration and lives in the historic wing. "But a lot of people who live here are mid-level workers or people on fixed incomes. Historically, the rents have been pretty moderate."

Only 105 of the original 372 units in the historic wing are occupied. Many residents accepted incentive deals from the landlord to move out before the renovations, and vacated apartments were not leased again.

Schwartz said that the building will still look Art Deco on the outside but that the apartments will lose features of their original character, including custom door knockers, forced-air vents over the doorways and milk shafts attached to kitchens where milkmen used to leave dairy products from the hallway.

"If you were in New York and you had an untouched prewar building, it would be a gold mine," he said, tapping a wall in the apartment of Zina Greene, president of the tenant association. "This is not drywall over metal studs. This is masonry, handcrafted plaster. You can't build this again."

B.F. Saul does not have to keep reconfigured vacant units under rent control.

The company is proposing to more than double rents in newly leased units. A first-floor efficiency that used to go for $1,430 a month would cost $3,333. Rent for a two-bedroom on the 10th floor would increase from $3,974 to $8,400, according to a rate list provided by the tenant association.

"On the one hand, we want landlords to upkeep a building, but the question is, should you up their rent and make tenants pay for vanity bathrooms and granite tops in the kitchen?" said D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3).

Jim McGrath, chairman of the D.C. Tenants Advocacy Coalition, said landlords often use renovation to push tenants out, enabling them to raise rents after remodeling. Although tenants have the right to return after renovations are completed, they rarely do, he said.

"It's a tactic of the landlord to kill rent control," McGrath said.

The Kennedy-Warren tenant association has filed a petition with the D.C. Rental Accommodations and Conversion Division, which is responsible for administering rent control laws.

A judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings is scheduled to review the dispute Feb. 28.

Like other tenants who have refused to pay the increase, Greene, the tenant association president, sends her rent check, without the surcharge, to a lawyer who deposits it in a city escrow account, where it is to be held until the matter is resolved.

She was part of the association in 1996, when it thought it had struck a deal with B.F. Saul to lock in rental rates in exchange for tenants' support of the tower's construction. Rent increases in rent-controlled buildings are capped at the yearly increase in the cost of living plus two percentage points, and surcharges for buildingwide capital improvement projects are capped at 20 percent, according to the D.C. Office of the Tenant Advocate.

B.F. Saul divided its renovation increases into two sums. A $179 monthly surcharge, which by law can last only eight years, went into effect in June. Some renters refused to pay, but there was no group effort to strike. That changed when the second one went into effect.

Greene said she regrets that the association was not more specific about its demands in 1996, which included forcing the landlord to upgrade the electrical and plumbing systems.

"We were the tool to support them, and then they turned on us," said Greene, 70, a retired restaurant owner who has lived in the building for 24 years.

While the parties wait for the judge to resolve the dispute, B.F. Saul is asking tenants to sign an agreement to lock in their rents without the surcharges in exchange for the ability to raise rents in the vacated apartments. Under D.C. law, the landlord needs 70 percent of the tenants to sign for the agreement to take effect.

Tenants said the company has told renters that if they don't sign, they will be subject to larger rent increases. The company has given residents until Jan. 31 to make a decision, tenants said.

Joel Cohn, legislative director for the District's acting chief tenant advocate, Johanna Shreve, said landlords are increasingly using such agreements and unfairly putting the burden of capital improvements and rate increases on future tenants.

"You can't coerce tenants, but this seems to coerce the tenants," Cohn said. "If you vote against the agreement, you're treated like a vacant unit" and therefore subject to a larger rent increase.

B.F. Saul plans to move the remaining tenants around the building as it renovates a tier at a time, the tenants said. The apartments will have new floor plans and upgrades consistent with new buildings in the District.

Ellen Ruina, 57, who has lived at the Kennedy-Warren since 2004, said that if she didn't love her ninth-floor apartment so much, she would have been gone by now.

"I understand it's a business," she said. "I understand they need to modernize, but the way they're handling it has been so unpleasant."