Councilmember Wells participated in the first Town Hall Meeting of the newly created Tenant Advisory Council held on Saturday, July 12, at St Aloysius Church on the Gonzaga campus in Northwest Washington.  Tommy expressed his support for the work of the Tenant Advisory Council and the organizations co-sponsoring the Town Hall meeting. 

He shared the frustration he experienced during his first months after taking office and learning that the private owners of the nearby Temple Courts apartment building had allowed the property to run down and become infested with vermin as a means of forcing tenants out so the building could be sold for commercial purposes. The owner had been collecting HUD subsidies and tenant rents for years, but failed to meet housing codes. As a result, the city forced the owner to negotiate a sale to prevent the loss of the 220 HUD subsidized apartments from the inventory of affordable housing located in the Northwest One community.

The Tenant Advisory Council, along with twelve organizational co-sponsors, convened the meeting to present its Action Demands to the DC Council Members and Agencies. Organizational sponsors included:  The Latino Economic Development Corporation, Empower DC, The Legal Aid Society of DC, DC Tenant Advocacy Coalition, AARP Legal Counsel for the Elderly, The Gray Panthers of Metro Washington, Bread for the City, WeAreFamily, Coalition for Housing Justice, Inc., Georgia Avenue/Rock Creek East Family Support Collaborative, Community Coalition for Justice and Peace and the Tenant Action Network.

The Action Demands represented seven overall actions that the Tenant Advisory Council is recommending that the DC Council and DC Agencies pursue in the interest of protection of the rights of tenants in DC.

In summary, the actions recommended include:

• Establish a system of mandatory annual inspections and enforcement of the housing code
• Improved procedures and regulations for inspections and enforcement
• Owners be required to prove compliance with the housing code before eligible for receiving rent increases
• Strengthen tenants’ judicial procedures for holding owners accountable for code violations
• Use District repair fund to preserve and maintain affordable housing
• Aggressive oversight of the inspection, enforcement and repair issues by the DC Council.
• Ensure full complement of members on the Tenant Advisory Council at all times.

The Tenant Advisory Council was created in 2006 through Council legislation. It is a ten-member body representative of all eight wards in the District  Its mission is to provide recommendations that protect the rights of tenants within the District of Columbia: (1) provide advice on tenant related issues to the DC Government; (2) monitor and evaluate the services provided to tenants by the Office of the Tenant Advocate and provide oversight of the DC government’s tenant related responsibilities in general; and (3) to do outreach to raise awareness of tenant-related issues in DC and to represent those concerns to the relevant stakeholders.