On July 23, the Department of Buildings tagged both elevators at the Delta Pearl, a 10-story, 166-unit apartment building at 1400 Florida Ave. NE, “unsafe for use,” according to a lawsuit described by The Washington Informer. The suit says the air conditioning went out July 1.
The plaintiff is the city. In September, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the building’s owner and manager. His office says both companies belong to Buwa Binitie, founder and CEO of Dumas Collective.
So in D.C., a broken elevator can end up with the attorney general. What can the city actually do to an owner who won’t make repairs? And what would two bills before the D.C. Council change?
The ladder, rung by rung
If you rent in D.C. and something’s broken, the Department of Buildings, or DOB, says to tell your landlord first. Then wait 10 days, or 24 hours for an emergency like no heat. Then you can request an inspection, which DOB schedules within 15 business days. If the inspector finds violations, the landlord gets 60 days to fix ordinary problems and 24 hours for emergencies. DOB also issues a notice of infraction, the formal citation.
Fines can run past $2,500 per violation, City Cast DC reports. The city generally waives them if the landlord makes the fix. Cases that stay unresolved go to a hearing at the Office of Administrative Hearings after 180 days, or 30 for life-threatening problems. City Cast says those cases can take up to two years, with about 13,000 pending. That’s a long line.
Beyond fines, the city can sue. And under the Tenant Receivership Act, a court can hand a building to a receiver. That can happen when the city has cited an owner for serious threats, like rats, broken locks or dead fire alarms, that never got fixed. A receiver is a neutral third party who collects the rent and makes repairs.
At Delta Pearl, the city asked for exactly that. The complaint alleges 199 unfixed violations over 15 months, 71 of them emergencies, and asks the court to appoint a receiver, the Informer reported. The 51st reported that a judge ordered repairs at the end of September.
The number that isn’t what it looks like
Delta Pearl isn’t the only building in the story. The 51st reported Oct. 22 that 12 properties owned or managed by Binitie’s companies have run up more than $2 million in housing code fines, according to DOB records. City Cast, counting differently, found 16 buildings and more than 1,600 outstanding violations.
Time for Stats 101: a fine on paper and a fine in the bank are two different animals. In fiscal 2023, DOB’s enforcement office reported $34.3 million in fines assessed and $730,752 collected. That’s about 2 cents on the dollar. But about $6.2 million of that assessed total was still awaiting a final order or had already been resolved, and fines are generally waived once a landlord makes the fix. So the gap doesn’t tell you why the money hasn’t come in, or what any one landlord will end up paying.
What the owner says
The owner’s side has numbers, too. In a statement after the suit, Binitie said “roughly two-thirds of Delta Pearl’s tenants are delinquent on their rent” and blamed prolonged court delays. A company representative put unpaid balances at more than $1.8 million. In a July email to a tenant coalition, Binitie said he was committed to “safe, decent, well-maintained housing,” and at a Council roundtable he argued that tenants behind on rent were using DOB filings to delay or avoid paying, The 51st reported.
Landlords make the case citywide. In September 2025, the Small Multifamily Owners Association shared a report saying D.C. landlords had lost more than $1 billion in unpaid rent over four years, The Washington Times reported, without explaining how the figure was calculated. The 51st notes it comes from self-reported landlord data; housing advocates counter that the problem stems from a shortage of affordable housing and substandard conditions.
Same Stats 101 rule. Binitie’s two-thirds figure, the landlord group’s $1 billion and the city’s violation counts all point to a problem. None, on its own, tells you how big it is or who caused what. Both can be true. Thinking is hard.
The city’s side, briefly. Schwalb called the conditions “shocking.” DOB Director Brian Hanlon said a property owner has “the ultimate responsibility” for a safe, code-compliant building.
What the bills would change
The STRONG Homes Amendment Act, B26-0493, announced by Schwalb and then-Council member Robert White in November 2025, rewrites the receivership law. As introduced, it would let the AG’s office use the city’s Tenant Receivership Abatement Fund for emergency repairs, relocation and receivers’ fees; let a court approve selling a building when an owner refuses repairs; bar rent increases to recover those repair costs; and let the AG seek to dissolve the companies that own the buildings. “This bill gives us the tools to step in faster,” White said. It had a public hearing July 7, and on Oct. 20 the Council approved it on first reading, 13 to 0. A final vote is still to come.
The LIEN Act, B26-0591, introduced Dec. 30, 2025, with White as its primary sponsor, would let DOB record liens, legal claims that attach to a property, against buildings with serious violations left unfixed. It was referred to the Committee of the Whole in February.
That’s the appeal of a lien in a nutshell: it stays with the building. The Children’s Law Center, a legal aid group, told the Council that DOB has repeatedly said it recovers more through liens than through fines. White, then the Council’s housing chair, said agencies are playing “whack-a-mole” against owners.
What comes next
Meanwhile, the other cases continue. In a suit the Office of the Tenant Advocate filed for tenants of a Georgia Avenue building managed by the same company, the company denied the allegations, and the two sides are scheduled to meet with a mediator in May 2027.
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