Print — The Arlington Connection — March 25, 2008
A landlord’s renovations force apartment dwellers out of their homes.
Sarah Hassaine awoke on the morning of March 11 to find a note slipped under the door of her apartment. Before even reaching the second paragraph, she could tell it was bad news.
“The letter was like ‘We value you as a resident but you have to be out,’” recalled the 25-year-old management consultant.
Hassaine and her husband Ayad, a local banker who is also 25, were being evicted from their one-bedroom apartment only five months after signing a 14-month lease. They weren’t alone.
All of the 218 apartments in Taylor Place received the eviction letters that morning. The letters stated that the apartments are being renovated and told the tenants that they had to vacate their homes in 120 days or less.
“I was shocked,” Sarah Hassaine said. “It was so sudden. It was out of the blue.”
When 24-year-old Aseel Elborno received the eviction notice, she had barely even finished unpacking her things.
Elborno, a graduate student and full-time employee at an Islamic relations think tank, had signed a 13-month lease for a studio apartment at Taylor Place on Feb. 26. Now, less than a month later, she was being told she had to leave.
“How could you let this happen?” she asked the apartment’s management. “How do you, with no bit of shame, let me sign up for this apartment knowing this would happen?”
The mass evictions at Taylor Place have thrown the lives of its tenants upside-down. The apartment building, built in 1962 and located on the west end of Columbia Pike in South Arlington, is home to a diverse mix of ethnicities and ages.
About This Story
This story won third place in the In-Depth Or Investigative Reporting category at the Virginia Press Association awards.
It was written for The Connection Newspapers, a chain of weekly publications in Northern Virginia. This story is reproduced here as it was originally published in the Arlington Connection.
Young, 20-something couples and singles like Elborno and the Hassaines reside side by side at Taylor Place with elderly residents who have lived there for decades. The building also houses a sizeable number of Hispanic, Middle Eastern and African immigrants.
Now, regardless of when they signed their lease agreements, all Taylor Place residents must find other housing by the summer.
“You sign it with a peace of mind,” Sarah Hassaine said. “When we signed it we were like ‘Ok, we’re set for the next 14 months.’”
“Now we’re out looking for a place,” her husband said.
The Hassaines were furious when they received the eviction notice and were certain that what their landlord was doing was illegal. After conducting some research, however, they were shocked to find that, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the evictions were totally above-board.
Virginia State Law requires landlords who are renovating their property to give tenants a 120-day warning if they will be evicted. But unlike in Maryland or the District of Columbia, areas that have strong tenant rights laws, landlords are not required to do anything else.
“In Virginia, the tenants really have to fight to receive more benefits,” said Caridad Palerm, executive director of Buyers and Renters Arlington Voice, or BRAVO, a local tenant advocacy group.
If a building’s renovations require a change in zoning for the property, approval from Arlington County is required. In recent years, the County has used this leverage to force landlords to do more for tenants who are displaced due to renovations.
In 2004, the County Board passed a set of tenant relocation guidelines that it requires landlords and developers to follow if they are requesting a zoning change. The guidelines require landlords to provide tenants with $750 to $1,200 in relocation costs and also require landlords to assist their tenants in finding new places to live.
However, the County cannot require landlords to follow these guidelines if their renovation projects are by-right, which means that the projects don’t require County approval.
“When they are asking for money from the County, the developer has to give 120 days notice plus a relocation package,” Palerm said. “When it’s by-right, in that case, they only have to give you 120 days.”
Ken Aughenbaugh, chief of the County’s Housing Division, said that many developers who are doing by-right renovation projects choose to comply with the guidelines voluntarily to maintain a good relationship with local officials.
Update
Arlington County’s local politicians reacted strongly to this story after it ran in The Connection. To read more, click here.
“Generally, the major developers are more aware of these things,” he said. “They’ve been through this process more than once. It’s often the owners of smaller buildings that are not as aware.”
The Taylor Place renovation is a by-right project. But the owners of the property, United Dominion Realty, are not complying with the tenant relocation guidelines.
Instead, they are offering their tenants a relocation package only if they move out on a predetermined day. The Hassaines, for example, were offered $750, less than a month’s rent, if they agreed to move out on May 14. If they vacate their apartment earlier or later than that date, they will receive nothing.
“May 14 happens to be on … a weekday,” Ayad Hassaine said. “Who’s going to move out on a weekday?”
“When the developer wants to avoid problems they offer money,” Palerm said. “That way they help the tenants and the tenants go quietly.”
Many of the residents of Taylor Place recently signed or resigned lease agreements shortly before the eviction notices were sent out. Larry Thede, Vice President of United Dominion, said that his company didn’t know when the renovations would begin because they had to wait until they received a building permit from the County before construction could commence. “The permit process is out of our control,” he said. “We can’t forecast when the permit will be issued.”
But, according to County documents, United Dominion, a publicly traded corporation based out of Denver that owns rental properties across the country, first applied for a building permit for its $2 million Taylor Place renovation project in May of 2007. Scores of Taylor Place residents, including Elborno and the Hassaines, signed lease agreements after this date.
Thede said that all laws are being followed for this renovation project and that residents of Taylor Place, which was assessed last year at more than $8 million, were properly notified about the renovations.
But Ayad Hassaine said that, in his opinion, if the letter of the law is being followed, the spirit of the law isn’t.
“Legally, they’re ok,” he said. “It’s just not ethical. It’s an immoral step to take. At least inform the residents before that takes place. They intentionally did not do that. They concealed the fact that they’ll be renovating simply because they knew … they would not have the renters.”
“They wanted the rent,” Sarah Hassaine added.
Elborno and the Hassaines both said that they would eventually find new places to live and would try to move on from this unpleasant experience.
“I just have a bitter taste in my mouth about the building,” Sarah Hassaine said. “I don’t want to be here now.”
But this process won’t be as easy for many of Taylor Place’s elderly residents, such as an Iranian couple who have lived in the building for almost 30 years. Both in frail health, the couple will now have the extra burden of relocating all their belongings, something they haven’t done since coming to America in the late 1970’s.
Aughenbaugh said that County officials became aware of the Taylor Place situation last week and are trying to encourage United Dominion to follow the tenant relocation guidelines. But he also said that the County’s efforts so far have been rebuffed.
“When initial contact was made they didn’t respond,” Aughenbaugh said. “We had our staff go down and pay a visit and see if they can get more information. It’s not always easy to get the full story.”
He added that, when it comes to getting by-right developers to comply with the guidelines, “We have had more success with some of the Arlington-based owners and developers who realize the importance of being a good citizen.”