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Background to the Right of Tenants To Organize Act

The bill was initially drafted after a tenant representative was confronted with Dept. of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) regulations 14 DCMR 3904.2 and 3904.3 during the course of representing a tenant association in a capital improvement case. Those provisions read:

3904.2 If a tenant association seeks to be a party, the hearing examiner shall determine the identity and number of tenants who are represented by the association.

3904.3 If a majority of the tenants are represented by the association, the association shall be listed in the caption.

In a meeting that DCRA's Rent Administrator (RA) held with tenant advocates in the spring of 2002, the tenant representative urged the RA to eliminate or revise these regulations, as unconstitutional and irrational infringements on the right of tenants to organize and advocate for their interests freely, but the RA declined. The tenant representative later challenged the regulations at the capital improvement hearing, but the Hearing Examiner felt constrained by them and required a signed authorization from every tenant the association claimed to represent.

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