Broken smoke detectors, rodent infestations, defective heating systems, and emergency repairs left unresolved long past their deadlines fill Washington’s housing inspection records— where nearly 89,000 violations remain open, and thousands of rental properties cannot be matched to required registration records.
A new investigation by Rentrospect, an independent housing research project, found that 77,117 of the 79,454 open violations with repair deadlines had passed those deadlines as of Sept. 30.
“The families in Wards 7 and 8 are paying the most they can for homes the city’s own records are struggling to keep track of,” Rentrospect founder and CEO Kwame Rose wrote in correspondence with The Informer. “That’s the story we think is still out of sight.”
The findings come as the D.C. Council considers the Shared Housing Agreements and Resolution Effort Act, or SHARE Act, intended to shorten eviction proceedings through early mediation between landlords and tenants. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb supports the proposal but wants amendments addressing legal representation, participation limits, and potential court delays.
Rose’s 16-page report, Out of Sight, examines whether the District can reliably establish which rental properties are licensed, properly registered, and subject to outstanding repair orders before disputes reach the courthouse.
The investigation identified 6,543 violations involving missing or defective smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, 6,212 involving rodents or insects, and 3,289 concerning heating equipment.
The D.C. Housing Authority accounted for 1,775 open violations across 194 addresses, with approximately $1.58 million in associated fines, according to the report.
Altogether, government records listed $88 million in assessed penalties. Rentrospect cautioned that those assessments do not represent confirmed outstanding debts or collected fines. Its calculations also exclude possible repair extensions, while some violation entries may be duplicates.
Another 14,503 active rental licenses, representing at least 42% of those examined, had no matching Rent Registry record. The organization acknowledged that incomplete matches do not necessarily establish illegal rental activity.
D.C. law requires landlords to satisfy licensing and registration requirements before filing eviction actions seeking possession. Yet the District’s licensing, registration, and housing inspection systems operate across separate agencies, leaving tenants to navigate multiple databases to examine a property’s legal status and repair history.
The report also found that publicly available Superior Court statistics do not identify how many tenants raise unsafe housing conditions as defenses or counterclaims. The court recorded 13,051 new landlord-tenant cases in 2025, but the published totals do not establish how frequently property maintenance becomes part of those proceedings.
In February, Schwalb filed a racketeering lawsuit involving more than 70 buildings and over 600 rental units, primarily in Wards 7 and 8, alleging more than 4,000 housing-code violations.
Census figures examined by Rentrospect show that 53.8% of Ward 7 renter households and 57.1% of Ward 8 renter households spend at least 30% of their income on housing. Their median monthly rents, $1,230 and $1,363 respectively, were the lowest in the District during the 2019-2023 survey period.
Schwalb has warned that eviction cases that once received initial hearings within approximately 30 days can now wait as long as 90 days, allowing unpaid rent to accumulate while landlords struggle to cover operating expenses.
His proposed SHARE Act amendments would expand annual mediation capacity from 2,000 to at least 5,000 cases, fund legal services and housing counseling, and prevent the program from prolonging proceedings.
“The SHARE Act is a meaningful step in the right direction,” Schwalb said. “These amendments are based on extensive conversations with both landlords and tenants and will help resolve eviction cases more quickly.”
Rentrospect proposes a single public database that consolidates rental licenses, registrations, ownership information, and complete housing inspection histories. Such a system would allow tenants to review a building’s records without searching across multiple agencies and help identify unresolved repair complaints during disputes over unpaid rent.
Rose questioned whether speeding up eviction proceedings adequately addresses the problems tenants encounter when government records cannot readily establish a landlord’s compliance history.
“The SHARE Act debate, like the RENTAL Act before it, is about speed and arrears: how fast cases move and who covers the unpaid rent,” Rose wrote. “Those are real problems. But there’s a piece missing.”
