Dozens of Shaw Eviction Suits Dismissed
In mid-March, residents of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Shaw, a refuge for abused and mentally ill women, got a rude surprise. Vision Realty Management, which recently started managing the building, filed suit against 54 residents of the 116-room facility, claiming they owed thousands of dollars in back rent. Most of the women protested, saying they were paid up.
Now, months later, it seems they were right. The overwhelming majority of the suits, says Rebecca Lindhurst, an attorney with nonprofit Bread for the City, have not held up in court. “We have done an exhaustive search of all the cases that came out of that initial wave of suits, and according to my findings, it looks like everything except maybe five cases were dismissed,” she says.
Sam Lowery, a Vision Realty partner, admits there were some recordkeeping issues on his company’s end.
“When [tenants] produced the evidence that they’d paid based on evidence that we didn’t have in our possession,” Lowery says, “we asked that those cases be dismissed, and rightfully so.”
“A few residents” still owe money, he says, “but we’re working with them.”
Alex Padro, a Shaw advisory neighborhood commissioner who’s been involved in the dispute since March, claims Vision took advantage of the fragile state of some of its tenants by suing without proper cause.
“The fact that you had a new management company…come in, and records that were in disarray, prompted them to overreact,” he says. “It was very cavalier, very unprofessional, and demeaning [to the YWCA residents].”
6 Responses to “Dozens of Shaw Eviction Suits Dismissed”
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June 6th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
That is cold to say the least. A lot of businesses in DC are in dissaray.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Hmmmm —- go after everybody who might have ever owed me something, and sue those who haven’t kept proof of payment. Who would be the least likely to be able to fight back? I could say “oops- sorry” to the unexpected few that kept reciepts —- but look at all I could get from the others by shear bluff.
Sounds to me like some charletons, scammers, flim-flammers, and con men have “legitimate” offices and business liscences.
June 27th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
[...] in Shaw have put up with a sudden change in management, threats of eviction, and 54 lawsuits—most eventually dropped—for nonpayment of rent . Now the residents of the single-room-occupancy facility—mostly [...]
July 18th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
The Phyllis Wheatley Tenants’ Care Association, Inc. was established 5/4/07 to protect ourselves from our own OfficeStaff\Board of Directors and Vision Mangement. The the same tenants sleeping on the floor are without beds (could be your mother) contrary to ABC NEWS information that 16 new beds were coming in to help these women. The building is still bug infested and a patch-up-job of covering up mold and meldew is in place. DCRA gave them 30 days to fix all the problems. How would you like your mother on the floor and bitten up for 30 days. Sounds like a concentration camp(sleep deprevation)? Disabled women back from foot surgery couldn’t use handicap shower because it was out of order and she was refused a key to the 3rd floor handicap shower stating it was not an emergency even though this was the 1st time in a week she was able to walk to take a shower. This was an office staff member refusing her and I personally called to see if the staff member would changer her mind and she hung up on me. God Help Us!
July 18th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Phyllis Wheatley YWCA Office Manager, Social Worker and Social Worker’s Supervisor visited a tenant to encourage her to keep her room clean and told her they saw her on TV protesting and warned her to be careful, that she could get the building shut down and then she would have a place to live. This tenant is disabled and came to me scared and worried that she had done the wrong thing to protest for her rights. She asked me if she could get in trouble. This tenant is disabled. This is flagrent abuse of power to intimidate a disabled person who is vulnerable.
July 18th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
correction: She would have no place to live.