Landlords and tenants will face off today as the D.C. Council convenes hearings on whether Mayor Adrian Fenty yielded to business interests when he fired the city’s top rent official.
Grayce Wiggins was dropped as the city’s rent administrator last month. The Fenty administration has cited its executive privilege — and employee privacy rules — in refusing to discuss the dismissal.
Tenants and renters advocates say Wiggins was let go because she sided with the little guys against big developers.
The city’s rent administrator has broad authority over thousands of rent-controlled apartments. D.C. law sets strict rules for raising rents in rent-controlled buildings.
In March, Wiggins ruled against Bethesda-based landlord B.F. Saul Co. when it tried to ratify an agreement between the company and tenants to raise rents in the historic Kennedy-Warren building in Northwest. Wiggins called the deal, which would have locked in lower rents for some tenants but raised rents by up to 300 percent for new renters, “patently coercive” and dismissed it.
Wiggins’ decision was welcomed by renters groups that accuse landlords of using so-called voluntary agreements to get around rent-control rules.
“It stopped them in their tracks,” D.C. Tenants Advocacy Coalition president Jim McGrath said of Wiggins’ decision. “Then she got fired. You put the two things together.”
Saul officials declined comment for this story but have previously dismissed suggestions that they had any role in Wiggins’ firing. Their attorney, powerhouse real estate lawyer Richard Luchs, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Neither did City Administrator Dan Tangherlini.
Wiggins, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, is not scheduled to testify at today’s hearing. But tenants are getting a sympathetic ear from Councilman Marion Barry, D-Ward 8, and Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3.
“We have a problem of lack of affordable housing,” Cheh said. “We have to have confidence that when the rent administration is asked to make rulings, those rulings are based on the law and not favor to one side or the other.”
