WASHINGTON — In 2021, WUSA9 reported on the landlord at Mayfair Mansions Apartments, after the complex was under federal investigation after efforts to control a growing rat problem may have poisoned our local waterways.
Now three years later, the Office of DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb says it did an investigation and settled with the management company. It requires the company to pay more than a million dollars in fines, maintain a security presence, fix exterior doors and address all housing code violations within 30 days, in addition to hiring pest control to come at least once a month.
WUSA9 visited Mayfair Mansions on Friday night, where we could easily push past the gates and enter the apartment complex. We spoke to tenants like Otelia Pittman who moved to Mayfair Mansions in 2017. She says it's constantly been one problem after another, including mold problems and paint peeling off of her bathtub.
Several other tenants did not want to be interviewed on camera, but they invited us into their apartments to show us the amends they've made on their own. One tenant had bought and installed a rubber weather strip between the door and its frame to keep cold air from coming into her unit during the winter.
Pittman says residents who live there have been neglected for far too long.
"Who cares? I just keep saying who cares, because who really cares? Because nobody comes out here and does anything for this community," she said.
So that's why she remains skeptical that actual change will happen.
"People out here have respiratory problems. Somebody cannot wake up in their unit. Nobody has time to keep playing games with enterprise, nobody has time to keep playing games with the city, nobody has time to be playing with this tenants association," she explained. "Nobody has time to be playing."
Argie Weatherington is the Section Chief at the Attorney General's Office and she told WUSA9 that investigations and settlements take time.
"The process depends on the size of the building and also the responsiveness of the landlord," she explained.
But she does maintain that "every resident, every tenant in the District of Columbia deserves safe, habitable housing."
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