DC Leaders Should Act to Improve TOPA and Reduce Costs for Renters

Good morning, Chairperson White and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Mychal Cohen, and I am a senior policy analyst at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI). DCFPI is a non-profit organization that shapes racially-just tax, budget, and policy decisions by centering Black and brown communities in our research and analysis, community partnerships, and advocacy efforts to advance an antiracist, equitable future.

DC is facing numerous threats to its affordable housing. Looming federal budget cuts threaten funding for affordable housing and housing vouchers. Locally, developers have cited high rental arrearages and difficulty paying off their debt. We also know that residents are struggling to pay their rent. Forty-four percent of renters are rent burdened, and that number jumps to more than half for Black renters.^[1] Households living at lower income levels feel this burden deeply: 69 percent of renters making less than 30 percent of the area median income (in DC, this is $56,920 or less for a family of four) are paying more than 50 percent of their income in rent (this is considered extreme rent burden).^[2] From 2019 to 2023, more than 1 in 4 Black renters and 1 in 5 Hispanic renters were extremely rent burdened compared to 13.8 percent of white renters.^[3] This leaves households making impossible choices between rent and feeding their family or rent and needed health expenses.^[4]

We have heard from some of our leaders that we need a balanced approach to the housing crisis. However, recent housing bills, including two of the bills that the Council is considering today, the “Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords (RENTAL) Act of 2025” and the “Eviction Reform Amendment Act of 2025,” are not balanced. They do nothing to tackle the affordability crisis tenants are facing and instead strip away Tenant Opportunity to Purchase (TOPA) rights, weaken tenant protections, remove critical notice requirements, and give tenants less time to stave off a pending eviction.

Today, I will review some of the myths and misconceptions that form the basis of the arguments for these two bills. I will also outline how Mayor Bowser and DC Council should look to proactively support tenants as a solution to this crisis and its harm to Black and long-term residents by

• Investing in affordable housing preservation;
• Passing the provisions in the “Common Sense TOPA Reform Amendment Act of 2025;” that will improve the TOPA process;
• Investing in proactive tenant support programs; and
• Not making it easier or faster to evict households.

Myth: TOPA Doesn’t Work Anymore and It’s Not Effective at Creating Affordability

One of the justifications for the current push to weaken TOPA is that it is not an effective tool for tenants to purchase their building. While it is true that few tenants are able to purchase their building outright with the current housing market, TOPA allows for several positive outcomes for tenants.

TOPA is a 45-year-old law that allows tenants a seat at the table when their buildings go up for sale. Tenants living in a building going up for sale are able to either purchase their buildings or assign their rights to a developer of their choice. Even if residents do not organize to purchase their building, TOPA allows them to negotiate with their existing or incoming landlord to ensure their units remain affordable, secure needed repairs, or even ensure some portion of new units are affordable. TOPA helps lead to the creation of limited equity cooperatives with tenants owning the property, preservation of affordable units by assigning rights to friendly developers, and securing improvements, repairs and renovations to their units.

The latest comprehensive information we have about the impact of TOPA comes from the TOPA Coalition (formerly the Coalition for Non-Profit Housing and Economic Development) report showing that between 2006 and 2020, there were 19,170 units where tenant associations were able to successfully negotiate a rental or ownership outcome. Of those units, 16,244 were either made or preserved as affordable.^[5]

The RENTAL Act contains a provision that exempts buildings with affordable covenants from TOPA. It is based on this myth that residents in affordable buildings don’t need TOPA protections because the units are already affordable. However, many of the buildings that have successfully used TOPA are those that have affordable covenants. The 2021 study of TOPA by the Coalition found that over 7,000 LIHTC units and over 3,000 Project-Based Section 8 units have successfully used TOPA to preserve their affordability.^[6]

Truth: Preservation Allows the District to Maintain Affordable Units and TOPA is a Key Tool for Preservation

Preservation of DC’s existing affordable housing stock is the surest way to prevent actual threats to our affordable housing ecosystem. By preserving units that are already constructed and often have federal subsidies attached, the District can ensure the availability of quality affordable units. TOPA is a critical tool to ensure that the District retains these units. As discussed above, TOPA has helped preserve thousands of units in DC’s affordable housing stock. It is particularly important that the Council recognize the importance of providing funds for preservation: additional funding would make it easier for friendly developers to purchase buildings and preserve their affordability.

The District should set aside at least a quarter of Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF) allocations for preservation projects. While preservation projects technically can apply for HPTF, the criteria the Department of Housing and Community Development uses to select projects makes it difficult for preservation projects to compete with new production projects. For example, in the HPTF Consolidated RFP issued in December 2021, only two of the 22 projects selected for underwriting were preservation projects. By setting aside a portion of the HTPF for preservation, the District can ensure more preservation projects move forward, and that those projects are financially viable, while increasing housing stability for residents in buildings in need of repair.

Truth: TOPA Can Be Improved by Increased Transparency and More Early Support for Tenants

The Common Sense TOPA Reform Amendment Act has several provisions that would improve the TOPA process. It formalizes the role of tenant organizers who already provide direct support to tenants in the TOPA process. The bill would create a formal designation, “Tenant Support Organization,” that would allow such organizations to get advanced notice of offers of sale. These organizations already do the work of engaging tenants, helping them understand their rights, and forming tenant associations if they choose.

In the current process, these support organizations may not be notified that a building is up for sale until after an interested developer or broker has engaged the tenants. Often, these actors may have a financial investment in getting the tenants to give up their rights or assign them to a particular developer. Allowing tenants to get more timely support from Tenant Support Organizations that do not stand to benefit financially from a sale will likely lead to better outcomes for tenants and ultimately a faster and smoother process. The Common Sense TOPA Reform Amendment Act would also provide for penalties for developers or landlords who attempt to mislead or coerce tenants during the TOPA process.

The bill also calls for the creation of a database to track TOPA outcomes. Such information would greatly aid long-term understanding of TOPA’s impacts and inform future conversations about needed program changes.

Myth: TOPA Depresses New Construction and Frightens Away Investors

The RENTAL Act exempts newly built and “substantially improved” buildings from TOPA for 25 years so long as 50 percent of the units achieve market rate rents, while the Common Sense TOPA Reform Act exempts new buildings for three years. Leaders have proposed these exemptions because of a drop in new building permits in the District. While the data do show a reduction in new building permits in DC, this is part of a national trend. There has been a 20 percent decrease in multifamily units under construction across the nation between 2024 and 2025.^[7] Further, DC’s drop in new construction starts is a relatively recent phenomenon. DC experienced massive growth in its multifamily inventory between 2014 and 2024.^[8] This growth would have been impossible if TOPA was a true barrier to new construction.

Truth: It is Possible to Meet the Needs of Investors Without a Blanket Exemption for New Construction

Another argument for weakening TOPA is that investors want to be able to invest in a building, make money from their initial equity once the building is constructed and leased up, and then exit without triggering TOPA. There are provisions within the “Common Sense TOPA Reform Amendment Act” that allow for investors to exit without triggering TOPA as long as the majority ownership does not change. A blanket time-limit exemption for new or substantially rehabilitated buildings will undermine the rights of renters in these buildings. The large majority of these buildings, if well built and maintained, will likely not see renters organize to use their TOPA rights if the building is sold. However, in new buildings that are not well built or have code violations, TOPA is a critical lever for tenants.

Myth: Renters Are Not Paying Rent Because It’s Impossible to Be Evicted

Even after DC lifted the eviction moratorium following the height of the pandemic, courts were not processing high numbers of evictions. Developers and some officials have used this to make the claim that tenants, no longer facing the possibility of eviction, have willfully stopped paying rent that they could otherwise afford. Data on evictions from 2024 and from the start of 2025 completely disprove this claim. Evictions in 2024 were up past pre-pandemic levels (the data also only tracks completed evictions, so informal evictions, or those where the tenant is not formally served notice of eviction but pressured to move out, would drive this number even higher), and this year DC is on track for similar levels of evictions.^[9],[10]

Even in the face of this data, the Council has already restricted access to one of the few emergency safety nets for renters by passing the Emergency Rental Assistance Reform Amendment Act of 2025. Now, the proposed Eviction Reform Amendment Act of 2025 and the RENTAL Act aim to make it easier for landlords to evict tenants. These proposed bills would give judges the discretion to allow an eviction case to proceed even if the landlord did not provide the tenant proper notice and shorten the notice to file period for non-payment of rent from 30 days to ten.

The human cost of evictions is well documented. Experiencing an eviction can cause trauma, has a significant impact on children, and makes it even more difficult to find stable housing.^[11] In DC, the impacts of evictions are disproportionately experienced by Black residents.^[12]

Truth: Underfunding Tenant Supports Makes Residents More Vulnerable to Eviction

Despite evidence that almost half of DC renters are unable to afford their rent, DC lawmakers have inadequately funded both the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) and the Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP). ERAP provides rental arrears to households who have experienced a financial emergency and LRSP vouchers allow tenants to lease an apartment and pay just 30 percent of their income on rent.

Mayor Bowser and DC Council have made it harder for renters to receive assistance and drastically cut the amount available. In 2024, DCFPI and the Fair Budget Coalition, among others, found that the need for ERAP was $100 million dollars. The mayor and the council funded it at $26.69 million^[13]? When the ERAP portal went live, it closed the same day because the Department of Human Services determined it had received so many applications that funds would be exhausted. The most valuable thing this Council could do to improve the stability and availability of affordable housing is to reject the proposed eviction changes and instead provide consistent support for renters, via ERAP and LRSP vouchers.

DC Leaders Should Act to Improve TOPA and Reduce Costs for Renters

I agree with the mayor and council that DC faces a daunting task in addressing the housing crisis and the housing ecosystem is under threat. However, the RENTAL Act and the Eviction Reform Amendment Act do nothing to get us closer to addressing these threats. Taking away TOPA rights and making evictions easier and faster are not balanced solutions and will put ever more pressure on DC’s already burdened renters. I have suggested a number of alternative pathways:

• Invest in preservation of affordable units by setting aside 30 percent of the Housing Production Trust Fund for preservation;
• Pass the provisions in the “Common Sense TOPA Reform Act” that allow advance notice to Tenant Support Organizations, create a publicly accessible TOPA database, and create penalties for bad actors in the TOPA process;
• Make it easier for investors to exit properties without triggering TOPA, as long as these exits do not constitute a full transfer of ownership of the property;
• Invest in proactive tenant support programs by creating more LRSP vouchers and fully funding the ERAP; and
• Take into account that evictions are the highest they have been in a decade and do not make it easier or faster to evict households.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to discussing these recommendations with you further.