We have several updates on the safety and security issues the residents of area apartment buildings have faced for at least the past five years.
Sedgwick Gardens – the apartment building that drew attention to the District’s “Housing First” policy for the homeless
In 2019, The Washington Post reported:
The SWAT team, the overdose, the complaints of pot smoke in the air and feces in the stairwell — it would be hard to pinpoint a moment when things took a turn for the worse at Sedgwick Gardens, a stately apartment building in Northwest Washington.
By February of that year, nearly half of the building’s apartments had been leased to tenants with city-issued housing vouchers, many of them had been recently homeless, and some arrived with severe behavioral issues.
“Even some Sedgwick Gardens residents who receive public assistance say the complex was colonized by the city’s housing programs too rapidly and without sufficient oversight,” wrote the Post in 2019.
Diane McWhorter, the president of the Sedgwick tenants association, tells Forest Hills Connection that a nightly “courtesy patrol” was added earlier this year from midnight to 8 a.m., but that this guard has no police powers and summons either the MPD or a security guard that Sedgwick Gardens shares with three other Borger buildings. Drugs are sold openly, she says, and a young resident recently moved out because of apparently illegal transactions and domestic abuse occurring in a nearby unit.
Where are the social workers?
That was the question in 2019, when the Post wrote about Sedgwick Gardens. It was the question in 2022, when then-deputy mayor Chris Geldart told an ANC 3F that the system “ain’t working”. And it remains the question today.
One of the two voucher programs administered by the DC Department of Human Services is Permanent Supportive Housing. Those who qualify meet these three criteria:
1) They have been “chronically homeless” – unhoused for at least a year.
2) They have a chronic disabling condition.
3) They require intensive case management. The Permanent Supportive Housing program is supposed to include twice-monthly visits from caseworkers.
But evidence that this support was often absent came up again and again in public meetings, and in April 2024, the Post published an article on a woman who had moved from a tent to an apartment in 2021. The woman “was soon accused of threatening staff, undressing in the lobby and rubbing her backside against a police officer responding to a complaint about her, according to police records and evidence presented in court.” She now faces eviction, and she told the Post “she did not know if there was a case manager or anyone responsible for helping her remain in her apartment.”
Checking in on the Brandywine Apartments
Once news of the Sedgwick issues broke, we learned that all was not well at the Brandywine Apartments at 4545 Connecticut. E. David Luria, then-president of the Brandywine Tenants Association, had started keeping track of police visits to the building in 2016. The 2019 tally seemed to be the worst of it – Luria, through FOIA requests, discovered a sharp increase from three to four dozen visits a year to 125 police visits in 2019. Luria and the tenants association lobbied landlord Borger for more and better management and 24-hour security. They got what they wanted, for a time.
In 2022, the additional security was removed, and police visits once again spiked, rising to 228 times that year, and 286 times in 2023. Police calls are on track to increase again this year.
DC policy remains inadequate.
Between 2021 and 2022, then-MPD Second District Commander Duncan Bedlion recommended that the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) designate four Van Ness apartment buildings – Connecticut House, 3003 Van Ness, the Chesapeake and the Saratoga – as “nuisance buildings.” DC law makes it possible for the OAG and community groups to sue the owners of these buildings if there’s evidence of drugs, gun or prostitution activity on the premises, but the OAG declined the police recommendation because the “lawsuits must also show that the properties are having an ‘adverse effect’ on the neighborhood as a result.”
One could argue that the neighborhood, in this case, should also include other residents and units in a building. This would require a legislative change. The DC Council could also enact laws clarifying the role of the police in investigating and securing apartment buildings. The District already has a separate police force for public housing under the DC Housing Authority. Another possible model is the School Safety Division of MPD, which has jurisdiction over hiring security guards – also known as school resource officers – in schools.
Tenant leaders continue to press for safety measures from landlords and DC agencies.
In 2022, the leaders of tenants associations in Ward 3 started sharing information with one another, and attending meetings with agency and political candidates and leaders (Mayor Muriel Bowser). They still meet virtually every other week, to share advice and strategize solutions and advocacy steps. A common complaint is also a familiar one: Landlords are not providing adequate security, which makes the police a necessary and frequent presence. They met with the OAG on this issue in late February.