A wide-ranging housing bill aimed at drawing investment into D.C. and reducing the city’s unprecedented levels of unpaid rent has reached the finish line after months of debate.
The D.C. Council on Wednesday afternoon passed its final version of the Rental Act, legislation that reforms longstanding tenant protections and gives landlords more latitude in the eviction process.
The Rental Act, which stands for Rebalancing Expectations for Neighborhoods, Tenants and Landlords, was first proposed by Mayor Muriel Bowser in February with strong support from the real estate industry, but the council made a series of amendments that some worry have weakened the bill.
The council’s version of the bill now heads to the mayor’s desk.
Bisnow/Jon Banister
The John A. Wilson Building, home to the D.C. Council and the mayor’s office.
The changes to the city’s regulatory environment come in two major bins: reforming the 1980s-era Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act and modifying the eviction process.
Landlord groups expressed general support but said the final legislation didn’t move the needle as far as they had hoped.
“While AOBA commends the Mayor and the Council for passing the RENTAL Act, amendments approved today have resulted in a final bill that fails to fully address the issues it is meant to solve,” Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington President and CEO Lisa Mallory said in a statement to Bisnow.
The Small Multifamily Owners Association called the bill a “major win for D.C.’s rental housing system” in a statement. But it took issue with amendments that walked back some of the mayor’s proposals and expressed disappointment that the bill didn’t include a 60-day deadline for the court to hear a case.
“The Council’s failure to adopt the Mayor’s proposed mandatory hearing deadline means thousands of cases will continue to sit for several months or longer, costing housing providers millions of dollars, pushing some into bankruptcy, and leaving tenants in unsafe, deteriorating homes,” the association said.
Tenant advocacy organization Legal Aid DC said in a statement that the passage of the bill “just set tenants’ rights back — not just to a pre-pandemic era, but decades.”
“This rushed legislation includes last-minute amendments that gave no opportunity for community input,” Legal Aid Supervising Attorney Amanda Korber said in the statement. “This RENTAL Act will not solve landlords’ issues with the eviction process. It won’t help DC’s housing crisis. But it will lead to more DC residents being evicted and unhoused at a time when so many are vulnerable.”
The passed legislation dramatically reduces the number of buildings in the District subject to TOPA, a law that gives tenants the right to purchase or partner with a purchaser when their building goes up for sale.
The Rental Act exempts new buildings — those in the first 15 years of their life — from the regulation, and it applies retroactively to properties that have been delivered within the last 15 years.
Landlords have long argued that the provision has drawn investment away from the city by elongating the process of selling a building and reducing the ultimate sale price. Executives at JBG Smith, MRP Realty and Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners spoke at a May council hearing on the Rental Act about how TOPA has contributed to a slowdown in housing development in D.C.
Housing starts in the District have plummeted, with the number of units that began construction in 2024 down 79% from the prior year.
Some council members, including Committee on Housing Chair Robert White, have echoed landlords’ concerns and framed this as an urgent crisis that requires significant action rather than incremental steps.
“Shit has gone off the rails,” White said during the council’s breakfast meeting Wednesday morning. “We can play around the edges, but we have to be honest about who that’s going to fall on. When cities don’t produce housing, housing gets more expensive. This is not a popular thing to do, but that’s what we’ve been called to do.”
The council’s version of TOPA reform didn’t go as far as the mayor’s original bill, which called for buildings to be exempt for the first 25 years after delivery.
The original bill would have exempted buildings with an affordability covenant from TOPA, but an amendment put forward Wednesday by Chairman Phil Mendelson and Councilmembers Janeese Lewis George and Brianne Nadeau eliminated that exemption.
The council rejected a proposed amendment from Ward 3 Councilmember Matt Frumin that would have further softened the bill by making all buildings that delivered prior to the bill’s passage still subject to TOPA.
In addition to the TOPA reform, the Rental Act shortens the timelines for landlords to issue eviction notices and conduct eviction proceedings.
Bowser proposed those changes in response to the alarms housing owners have raised over millions of dollars in unpaid rent tenants have racked up that puts their financial stability at risk.
Small Multifamily Owners Association CEO Dean Hunter and a group of members on Tuesday presented council members with a report estimating that landlords across the city have accrued at least $1B in unpaid rent since the start of the pandemic.
The issue of unpaid rent threatens to put housing properties into foreclosure, and for affordable communities, it could mean losing their income-restriction covenants, a situation Bowser has said she is trying to avoid.
The bill speeds up eviction timelines by shortening the time landlords are required to alert tenants before they file an eviction case from 30 to 10 days — the prepandemic requirement didn’t require any lead time. And it shortens the hearing summons period from 30 to 14 days.
It also gives judges discretion in instances of case “deficiencies” to correct the errors without throwing out the entire case.
And it adds protections for victims of domestic violence during the expedited process.
Another passed amendment, introduced by Mendleson, makes it easier for landlords to request that tenants pay rent to a court registry throughout the judicial process.
The amendment from Mendleson, Lewis George and Nadeau places barriers against tenant organizations at TOPA-eligible buildings assigning their rights to a third party either preemptively or quickly after receiving notice of a sale offer.
An amendment from Councilmember Anita Bonds that exempts small properties from TOPA — if they are owned by landlords with two or fewer properties — also passed.
Council members offered up several other amendments to the bill Wednesday that failed to pass.
Amendments mandating a meditation process in eviction cases and increasing the prefiling notice timeline to tenants were among those voted down.