TENANT HELP NEEDED POST HASTE!

For Immediate Release: March 19, 2008

For Information: Call Jim McGrath (202) 387-1893

TENAC is glad that at long last the Washington Post has caught up with our message on rent control, affordable housing, and tenants’ rights. We have been beating the kettle drums on those subjects for a long time, and it’s nice to know that the Post has finally discovered “tenants” and “rental housing.” The paper’s excellent series on the grave hardships tenants face at the hands of District landlords is long overdue, and does not absolve it from years of ignoring those concerns. The Post’s love affair with landlords is preeminent, obviously stemming from the millions of dollars derived from classified ads pushing high-end rentals, condominiums, real estate and related services. The newsprint for all of this, moreover, is probably the equivalent of every tree in Rock Creek Park.

Considering the huge tenant population of this city, The Post’s neglect of renter’s concerns is a scandal. Its Metro Section is a farce. There is no meaningful coverage there of rental housing matters and most other local issues as well, and nobody reads Close to Home. Apartment Life (with the exception of an occasional piece by Sara Gebhardt) Real Estate and Classified Advertisement sections are landlord handbooks. As the only game in town as far as newspapers go, the Post is as “absentee” on tenant concerns as the worst “absentee” landlords. We hope that will change. To assist the paper, TENAC would be glad to provide our releases, testimonies, and information flyers, which for years have detailed rent-control, rent-gouging, building code violations, bug and rat infestation, evictions, displacements, the condominium conversion craze, gentrification effects, the wholesale loss of rent-controlled buildings, dysfunctional rental housing regulatory agencies et al. The paper should also consult our website listed below.

The Post needs to do a lot more than a once in a blue moon special series on the outrageous “vacancy exception” in District Rental Housing Law, and needs to focus on rental housing abuses all across the board. Both have emptied hundreds of rent-controlled buildings and sent an untold number of vulnerable tenants packing. The Post is not alone in its myopia; the mayor and Council also need to get their eyeglasses changed. We remind them all of TENAC’s central thesis: “Rental housing is not a commodity. We are not talking about oil futures, pork bellies, or Reebok Sneakers; we are talking about the roof over people’s heads.”

LONG LIVE RENT CONTROL, AFFORDABLE HOUSING,

AND TENANT RIGHTS!

D.C. TENANTS’ ADVOCACY COALITION

REPRESENTING ALL D.C. TENANTS

P.O. BOX 7237 WASHINGTON, DC 20044 (202) 628-3688

WEBSITE: www.tenac.org E-MAIL: tenacdc@yahoo.com