Shiloh Baptist Church hasn't made many friends in Shaw by keeping a string of five properties on 9th Street NW north of P Street—now prime real estate in the fast-changing neighborhood—vacant for about a decade. The neighbors might not even mind as much if the church were at least open about their plans for the property, but they've been totally opaque (and, needless to say, haven't ever returned my calls or emails).

At Wednesday night's Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2C's meeting, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs vacant property unit chief Reuben Pemberton detailed the church's delinquence, and got an earful outside when his presentation ended from churchgoers who thought he was singling them out. "There are vacant properties all over the city!" one huffed. "It's not just Shiloh."

Pemberton tried to tell them that the neighbors were getting restless. "If there is a plan, I would suggest moving forward with it," he said. "At the end of the day, you're losing money here." And how! In 2011 alone, they were taxed at the vacant rate, which came to about $325,000 for all five combined (it would have been similar the previous year, but there was no vacant tax rate in 2010 while the D.C. Council was futzing with the law).

So why doesn't Shiloh just sell them? I asked outreach minister Thomas Bowen whether there was a plan, and was told sternly by Holland & Knight super-lawyer Chip Glasgow that I'd know just as soon as everybody else. But the church dropped a hint in September 2010, when they "broke ground" on a community services center—it took another year to actually get started—and talked of building an education and conference center at 1526-28 9th Street, and senior housing at 1532-36.

They're missing one property in the middle: 1530.

That still belongs to brothers Michael and Reuben Marks, whose family has operated an electrical service there for 30 years now. Michael says that Shiloh's approached them on and off over the past decade, but never made a firm offer. "It's too many people that you deal with. You may deal with one group of people this year, and another group of people next year," he says. "Between that time, they come up with a different plan, different price, then you never hear anything from them."

And they need a really good price to leave—Marks isn't ready to give up the business yet, and relocating is expensive. So they wait, while Shiloh decides what to do.

Settling in. (Lydia DePillis)

What are some of the biggest improvements that DCRA has made in the last few years under your predecessor Linda Argo?

I think we’ve made advances in terms of customer service, in terms of our website. A lot more information is given to the public, so they don’t necessarily have to call us, they can go on the website. Michael Rupert just did wonders on the website, designing it. And also, Michael was big on Twitter, so you got a lot of information electronically. He participated in some of the blogs, I guess you would say blogs. So in real time, a person would send in an email, or send in a tweet I guess you’d call it, and say 'hey I need a permit, how do I get it?' and he’d say 'this is what you need to do.' So you didn’t have to come down and stand in a long line, only to be told ‘you didn’t copy a certificate of occupancy, so go stand in that line.’ They would come in knowing exactly what the needed.

Also during the past few years, part of which was under [former director] Patrick Canavan, vacant property. We did a block by block survey in 2007 of the entire city to survey vacant properties. And I think we went from an inventory of about 600 or 800 to 3000. So we required owners to register vacant properties, to maintain them according to law. And we thought that was a tremendous accomplishment. Because we found that a lot of police service calls, and a lot of DCRA calls are for vacant properties, which become nuisances.

Also, in terms of IT, we increased the public’s ability to apply for some building permits online, which happened under Director Argo’s leadership, but it started under Patrick Canavan. In fact, there’s a kiosk at Home Depot where you can get some building permits. That reduces the number of trips you need to make to DCRA, and it reduces the amount of staff we need.

Before taking this job, you were essentially the agency’s public face, dealing a lot with individual problems. Do you like getting yelled at?

Well, I see myself as a communicator. I’m still an attorney. And as a litigator, I’ve had to argue before judges and juries. And as deputy director for community service, I would attend hundreds of community meetings, a lot of which were on behalf of Director Argo. I think it’s just in how you approach people. What I found is that people just don’t know. And because the agency’s so complicated, you can’t just go to one person and get an answer. In most cases, I know the answer. But you can’t walk into DCRA and say ‘I want to start a business, what do I do?' In fact, a lot of the time, you have to go to an attorney. So a lot of people get frustrated, thinking they’re going to come down here and one person’s going to be able to answer all of their questions.

Sometimes I get yelled at, but that didn’t bother me, it’s part of my job. I’m a civil servant. Some people don’t use that term anymore, but it used to be that what be called them. I work for the people. I have to treat them with respect, no matter what, and I have to try to calm them down.

Sometimes, people don’t understand. I had a guy come in yesterday, he was the owner of a condominium unit. And some condominium owners, they call themselves tenants. They say, ‘I have a housing code violation,’ and I say, ‘who’s your landlord?’ And they say ‘well, I don’t have a landlord.’ 'Well, you have to have a landlord if you’re a tenant.' ‘Well, it’s a condo.’ ‘Do you own the unit, or are you renting?’ ‘I own it.’ So this person is upset that the roof is leaking, he wants to blame the developer. But the condominium was built in 2006, and the burden is on the condo association to fix that roof, because they’re private homeowners. I can’t force the association to fix the roof.

We don’t get a lot of that, but we get enough to know that people just don’t understand.

I always make the comparison with our inspections and the DMV, where you get your car registered. They do a superficial inspection, and see that there are no life safety issues. That your brake lights are working, that your windshield wipers are working. They don’t check your transmission. They don’t check your engine. And that’s what we do, we make inspections for life safety issues. But people want us to do a lot of things that we can’t do, or that they need to go to court for. People don’t understand our limitations.

Sometimes we react to the public to appease the public, and we’re wrong. We get sued. In one case, neighbors didn’t want a group home. And under the Fair Housing Act, group homes can be situated as a matter of right anywhere, up to seven occupants. But people don’t want group homes. I’m amazed that people will actually say, we don’t want them in our neighborhood. We don’t want Section 8 people. We don’t want ex-offenders. We don’t want juveniles in the juvenile system.

We had a situation in the attorney general’s office where somebody wanted to paint their house pink, some loud color. People say, ‘We don’t want this pink house in our neighborhood.’ Look, the law requires that we not discriminate. They say, ‘we don’t care about that. Put it somewhere else.’

We had two fair housing cases where we lost in federal court, and in one case, the judge criticized us, the DCRA, for delaying. In Tenleytown, they criticized us for holding up the certificate of occupancy to give in to the neighbors. Peaceoholics was the exact same thing. It was like, ‘we don’t want them here, no matter what.’ And our position was, we don’t have the authority to deny somebody who, as a matter of right, can situate a building, business home or whatever, because by law, we cant discriminate.

With the pawnshop on Georgia Avenue, Councilmember Bowser amended the law for her constituents to say that ANC commissioners have to be given great weight with respect to issuing a pawnbrokers license. With licenses, our role is ministerial. You come in, you say ‘I want to open a pawnshop.’ If you meet all the requirements, we’re required by law to give you that license. There’s no deliberation involved. Alcohol licensing, the alcohol board has the discretion to issue or not issue an alcohol license. We don’t have that authority. Except now with the new law, we have to at least give ANCs great weight. And I think that’s the only license on the books where we have the authority to deliberate. In that case, the ANC opposed it, and they gave their reasons, and the business rebutted it, and we looked at both sides, and we found no compelling reason not to issue the license, and we issued the license.

The pawnshop applied for the license, and spent a lot of money renovating the property. It was only after they did all that that they got the opposition. So I think it would be grossly unfair to say, you spent $100,000 to renovate it, and after that the commission opposes it, so we’re not going to give you a license. Hands down, we would have lost in court. I’ve been a litigator for 20 years. If we did that, the pawnshop would have gotten a hefty judgment by either jury or judge.

A lot of times, people just don’t understand. And it’s incumbent on us to make them understand. In most cases, we follow the law correctly here. If someone doesn’t want a pink house in their neighborhood and somebody else does, we have no authority to say you can’t have a pink house, but somebody’s going to be upset if we don’t stop the pink house, or we don’t stop the group home. And people want to blame somebody, and it’s typically DCRA.

One of the complaints I hear about DCRA is about business regulation: There are too many fees to pay and hoops to jump through. Do you plan on cutting down at all on red tape?

We don’t enact laws. That’s done by the legislature. I can’t think of a law on the books that says ‘you must do this’ that I think is antiquated, that shouldn’t be. I think we should move more towards information technology, allowing people to apply for things online. But I think the laws are designed for safety and welfare. And I think once you start stripping requirements, then you are making it more risky for a visitor or a tenant or whatever.

Now, we also have a code coordinating board that’s revamping all of the laws. We’re going to be among the first jurisdiction to revamp all of its codes. So I think we’re on track to be a model for other jurisdictions. We have looked at the laws on the books and we’ve modified some, and some of them might be antiquated, so we’ve gotten rid of those.

What are your biggest challenges going forward?

When I started here in 2005, we had 80 inspectors, 40 commercial, 40 residential. Today we have 23 inspectors. All of whom aren’t doing inspections; there are a few supervisors. That’s a huge challenge. We’ve had to do reductions in force over the last few years. When I started, we had 400 employees, now we have 270. It’s stressful in two ways: One, the thought of having to be reduced or terminated. There are employees who are currently on board who fear, ‘am I going to be reduced because of the economy?’ That same employee is stressed out because their work load has increased. If you have more customers coming out to be serviced, that’s more stress on the customer. They have to wait longer to be serviced. Big challenge. You have less people answering the telephones. Instead of waiting a couple of minutes of waiting, now you have to wait a long time.

What directives have you gotten from Mayor Gray yet, if any?

Mayor Gray wants us to be more transparent. We had our first cabinet meeting, and one of our marching orders is to be more transparent, to engage the community. We’re changing the way we do business, to get the community’s input. And to that end, I’ve reached out to the ANC commissioners and asked if we can have a training session, and explain to them the processes. And I think if we educated the ANC commissioners, I think knowledge is power, and they can say ‘this person is building an addition to their house. You may not like it, but it’s allowed as a matter of right by law. Don’t blame DCRA for enforcing the law.’

And that’s just the way Mayor Gray is. He’s honest, he’s open, he’s deliberate, in fact he gets criticized for being deliberative, which is a good thing. You should listen to both sides. 'This is your viewpoint, this is your viewpoint,' and we’ll make a decision based on what’s right, and that’s the way he is. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m glad to be working in his administration, because we think alike.

Linda Argo’s departure came as a surprise to a lot of local government watchers, since it didn't seem like anyone was publicly calling for her removal. Do you know why you were chosen to replace her?

Well, I heard that the transition team recommended me. I heard that people told the mayor that I would be a good fit for director. There’s some synergy between Mayor Gray and I. We’re both native Washingtonians, we’re products of the public school system. He’s called on me in the past when he was a councilmember and when he was chairperson, I was very responsive, he liked that in me. He liked the fact that I had the law background.

And it’s political. I have nothing bad to say about Linda Argo, but it’s partly political, and it’s part that synergy. It’s no reflection on competency of the former director. It’s more about me, going forward. As the mayor he has the prerogative to choose the people who best fir his goal and his mission, and I think that it was me.

And again, the Mayor and I go way back. When I was at Forest Haven, [when Gray was director of the Department of Human Services,] he was very demanding, to make sure those citizens were treated fairly. We knew who Vincent Gray was, because we better have done the right thing for those citizens that were under our care. Our paths have crossed for 30 years.

Jessica Barakat says a stricter interest rate cap would kill her store. (Darrow Montgomery)

Jessica Barakat doesn’t think of herself as a predatory lender. For nearly half a century, the law agreed, allowing her family to operate Crown Pawnbrokers at 14th and S Streets NW. The store survived the 1968 riots as well as the turbulent years that followed. And it has plugged along very nicely over the past decade, too, as gentrification has filled the area with home-furnishing stores catering to increasingly wealthy residents. “We fit right into the neighborhood,” Barakat says.

The upscale surroundings suggest that the mere presence of a pawnshop is not a guarantor of urban blight. Instead, the existential threat currently facing Barakat originates a few miles north, on a stretch of upper Georgia Avenue where the attitude is a little bit different.

Early this year, national chain Famous Pawn began work on a third D.C. outpost in a former real estate agent’s office opposite Walter Reed Army Medical Center. To Sara Green, the local ANC commissioner, the new pawnshop seemed to mock the street banners proclaiming her neighborhood’s rebirth: “Good Things Are Happening on Georgia Avenue.”

“In the ’80s, it was Sodom and Gomorrah,” Green says of the stretch’s previous mercantile mix. “It was either a sexually oriented business or a liquor business, primarily. And we worked very, very hard to get that part of Georgia Avenue to encourage quality retail. Having a pawnshop sends a chilling message for the future on that block.”

Three residents filed a lawsuit to stop Famous Pawn from getting a license, arguing that the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs was supposed to have considered the community’s input. They also pushed Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser to introduce an emergency bill—the Predatory Pawnbroker Regulation and Community Notification Temporary Act of 2010—making new pawnbroking licenses subject to the approval of the affected ANC. It passed the D.C. Council unanimously on May 4.

But Bowser, noticing that existing laws hadn’t been updated in 20 years, wanted to go further. The council had capped interest rates charged by payday lenders at 24 percent in 2007, which totally put an end to such businesses in the District. Bowser wondered why the eight pawnshops in D.C. were still allowed to charge more than twice that amount.

Originally, Bowser proposed to immediately cut the interest that pawnshops are allowed to charge from 60 percent per year (that’s five percent per month) to 24 percent per year (or 2 percent per month). That would make D.C.’s among the nation’s toughest. Massachusetts may come the closest, with a 36 percent cap.

Barakat threw herself on the mercy of the councilmember’s staff. “I’ve never been to the Wilson Building before, and I was crying my eyes out, saying, ‘You know what this is gonna do to me?’” Barakat recalls. The last-minute appeal spared Crown, at least for the time being: Bowser modified the temporary legislation to affect only those shops granted licenses after April 1, 2010. But now she’s pushing a permanent version that would cover all of them.

At a hearing on the bill early this month, Bowser said she wasn’t trying to chase an entire industry out of town. “I would like to clarify that this bill does not ban pawnshops,” she said. “What this bill says is that consumers should be protected.”

The proposed limit rests on two assumptions.

The first: Pawnshops are a detriment to development, polluting neighborhoods with crime and poverty. But Crown isn’t the only local pawnshop that stands as an exception to that rule. One of Famous Pawn’s locations is right next to the tony Social Safeway in Georgetown. (“Most people don’t even notice it’s there,” says local ANC Commissioner Charles Eason.) Meanwhile, there are no pawnshops in all of downtrodden Wards 7 and 8.

The second: Pawnshops take advantage of society’s most helpless. “Decisions made under desperation, without contemplation, often lead to disaster,” said ANC 4A Commissioner Dwayne Toliver, who lives near Georgia and Fern Street NW. “Just because you give someone a choice doesn’t make the consequences conscionable.”

At the hearing, Famous Pawn was represented by Rick Wessel, CEO of its corporate parent, the Texas-based moneylender First Cash. The publicly traded company owns 560 stores in the United States and Mexico, and has been doing great during the recession: Profits rose 14 percent in fiscal year 2009. Wessel spread a bit of that money around in the days between Bowser’s hearing and the June 10 campaign filing deadline, making at least $8,000 in donations to Councilmembers David Catania, Jim Graham, Harry Thomas, Kwame Brown, and Vince Gray.

First Cash’s local lawyer, Roderic Woodson, from the blue-chip firm of Holland and Knight, told Housing Complex that the company would shut down all of its pawnshops in the District if Bowser’s bill passes.

The D.C. pawn industry’s greatest weapon, however, could be the 28-year-old Barakat, who at her testimony this month looked like the picture of the noble businesswoman fighting big-government overreach. Backed by her mother, who was too emotional to speak, Barakat proudly traced the history of her 14th Street shop—taking particular offense to the bill title, which labels pawnbrokers “predatory.”

Then she brought out some of her repeat customers. “It has been a great financial asset for me,” said social worker Anne Thomas, who credited the short-term loans with helping pay for her son and daughter’s higher education. Joy Davis, a criminal investigator, said she recently pawned something with Crown to pay for her mother’s funeral.

The compelling display was at least partly orchestrated by attorney Douglas Patton, a former deputy mayor for economic development now with the government-relations firm Oldaker, Belair, and Wittie. Patton’s client list includes the Archdiocese of Washington and General Motors; he also co-chairs mayoral hopeful Gray’s fundraising committee. He says he took Barakat’s case out of a desire to help out small business.

Indeed, it’s hard to lump Barakat with the pawn industry’s corporate royalty. Her average loan amount, $150, is less than half of the average between Famous Pawn’s two existing D.C. stores. But the basic economics are similar: She charges $2 a month on anything valued at less than $40, 5 percent a month on items up to $500, and 2 percent on anything over $1,000. The reason pawnshops should be able to charge higher rates than a payday lender or a check casher, the industry argues, is that dealing with physical collateral makes for higher overhead.

Barakat, though, hasn’t joined up with her local pawnbroking brethren, perhaps realizing that she doesn’t benefit from the association with shops that recall the old pawnbroker stereotype—such as the Famous Pawn on lower Georgia Avenue, with its Plexiglas barriers and dodgy setting. She says she’s even tried to talk Wessel out of his plan to put a store on upper Georgia, where all the trouble started.

“If the neighborhood doesn’t really want you there, maybe you shouldn’t go in there,” she says.

The Uptown Arts Overlay. (Brooke Hatfield)

Aman Ayoubi thought he was golden. One year and half a million dollars into retrofitting a long-empty building at 14th and U streets for a new restaurant and nightclub, he had a 15-year lease and two liquor licenses in the bag. Permit-wise, he figured the hard part was over.

He was wrong. On April 5, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) abruptly stopped issuing the all-important certificate of occupancy to any new business planning to serve food or alcohol along the 14th or U Street corridors.

“It’s a very big, big, big problem,” Ayoubi, who also owns the existing Local 16 restaurant on U Street, told Housing Complex. “The investors are not going to put one more penny into this until we have something in writing that says we are safe.”

Ayoubi does have some recourse. He can apply for a special zoning exception, but that could take four to six months. Meanwhile, the restaurateur—who is also constructing another new boîte a few blocks south—is paying a combined $45,000 in rent for two buildings bringing in no revenue, plus legal fees.

“On top of everything else, the D.C. government threw this on us,” Ayoubi says. “I hope it gets resolved soon, before we all go bankrupt.”

The fallout from DCRA’s sudden freeze on the occupancy permits has been dramatic, icing projects already underway, spooking would-be investors, and sending elected leaders into a tizzy. It also reopened old wounds in the body politic.

When Housing Complex first reported DCRA’s shocking announcement online two weeks ago, a flurry of heated comments ensued. Neighborhood blogs exploded with indignation. Fingers were pointed in all directions, some directed at this reporter’s portrayal of the situation. One critic even threatened legal action. Participants in this regulatory brouhaha could be almost evenly divided between two camps: Those who want to see more bars and restaurants on U Street, and those who think there are too many already.

The mantra that hangs in the air in all of these conversations has to do with the long-time D.C. denizen’s bête noire: Adams Morgan. As in, “We don’t want to become another Adams Morgan.”

On the flip side, no one wants to become another Cleveland Park, either, with its frumpy retail shops and empty storefronts. And the issue facing U Street and 14th Street is exactly the same problem Cleveland Park has been wrangling with for the past 10 years—namely, regulations limiting food and drink. “Restaurants can’t open in Cleveland Park, and instead you’re getting tanning salons,” grumbled former Board of Zoning Adjustment chair Ruthanne Miller at a panel discussion last week. “Is that what the neighborhood wants?”

Since 1989, 14th Street NW from N Street to Florida and U Street between 15th Street and Georgia Avenue has been nestled beneath an “arts overlay,” a set of regulations designed to foster a diverse mix of cultural institutions. Cleveland Park has similar regulations. The rules include a 25 percent cap on the linear street frontage taken up by “eating and drinking establishments,” with the intention of leaving room for theaters, galleries, and other arts-related uses.

For nearly 20 years, however, DCRA never even took the measurements, and no one was denied a license on the grounds of violating the cap.

In late 2008, that all changed: JBG Companies came to local Advisory Neighborhood Commissions with a proposal to build a new mixed-use development at 14th and S streets. If it put restaurants in the ground floor, the cap would likely be reached, forcing the company to get a special exception for its project from the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

Suddenly, people realized that the arts overlay could start to stifle all business in the corridor rather than simply limit bars and restaurants to leave space for local artists. So in June 2009, area resident and economist Andrea Doughty spearheaded a task force to figure out how the zoning ought to be modified. After eight public meetings with a broad swath of businesses, residents, and local government officials, the task force found that more bars and restaurants actually help artsy institutions like the Source Theatre survive. Moreover, most places to eat and drink in the area often double as exhibition spaces, blurring the line between arts and recreation. The task force’s report, endorsed by three ANCs and a host of neighborhood organizations, recommended that the 25 percent cap be raised to 50 percent as soon as possible.

But, in order for the zoning commission to lift the cap, DCRA would eventually have to do a street frontage inventory. The process started earlier this year. Local leaders fully anticipated the survey would reveal the 25 percent threshold had already been reached. But few expected the zoning administrator to put a cork in new permits entirely.

“Everybody was a little caught off guard by how quickly it turned into a ruling,” says Scott Pomeroy, a former chair of the U Street Neighborhood Association. “There had been no push for the enforcement, with the realization that it really wasn’t going to achieve anything that people wanted it to.”

To explain DCRA’s abrupt decision, many point to the efforts of three persons—specifically, ANC Commissioners Ramon Estrada and Peter Raia and Phyllis Klein of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association—each known for their outspoken opposition to new liquor licenses. On March 11, all three met with Fred Moosally, director of the district’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, about completing the frontage inventory. (Estrada did not respond to calls for comment, but Raia and Klein both confirmed the meeting took place. Klein had just this statement: “The community’s shared objectives are to responsibly preserve, develop, and promote 14th and U Street’s neighborhoods.”) Moosally then turned to Zoning Administrator Matt Le Grant, who shortly completed the inventory and issued a freeze on new permits.

For Raia, advocating for enforcement of the cap was about curbing the growth of new bars in his single-member district, which covers U Street between 9th and 14th streets—the most concentrated area of bars and restaurants in the whole overlay. “It’ll slow down liquor licenses, but it won’t slow down small businesses,” he says (Raia supports the ability of projects already in the works, like Ayoubi's, to open on schedule). “Even when I talk to licensees, they even feel there’s enough restaurants and bars. They can’t make enough money, because there’s too many of them.”

The local MidCity Business Association, however, warned that the decision could miscast the area as anti-business.

Politicians were quick to respond. Councilmember Jack Evans threw his weight behind boosting the cap. So did the Fenty administration: DCRA Director Linda Argo reassured businesses that the rule would be eased, and the Office of Planning recommended that the Zoning Commission take emergency action to change the limit.

In the meantime, local businesses have been scrambling to find out whether their ventures can move forward or not.

Last week, DCRA released a spreadsheet of its decisive inventory. Some operators filed their applications just in time to make the cut. “I could have been burned,” says Mark Kuller, whose Spanish-inspired Estadio at 1520 14th St. NW will proceed as planned. “I don’t think anyone was particularly worried until this note came out.“

Others weren’t so lucky. Grillfish owner David Winer scotched a project when enforcement of the cap was announced. BlackSalt operator Jeff Black, too, was strongly considering opening a location on 14th Street until the news dropped. He’s now shifted his sights to Capitol Hill.

Restaurateur Ian Hilton, meanwhile, isn’t sure what will happen with his planned gastropub, the Brixton, located at 901 U Street NW. “I don’t know,” Hilton says. “It would be great if you could tell me.” CP

This story will appear in this week's issue of the Washington City Paper.

Florida Avenue Grilling
A D.C. homeowner and his contractor agree on one thing: They hate each other.

When Christopher Turman wanted to take a shower, he didn’t stroll over to his bathroom like most people in the civilized world. He’d wait until his neighbors went to bed. Then he’d sneak out back, turn on the garden hose, and start scrubbing.

Turman wasn’t homeless. He owned a place with three showers. They just didn’t work right, and Turman blames his contractor.

In spring 2007, Turman bought a small row house in the 1300 block of Florida Avenue NW for $460,000. He then signed a $135,000 contract with Sheldon Roseman of Life Long Construction. It called for heightening his basement ceiling, remodeling his kitchen, fortifying his roof, and doing a variety of other upgrades to “his perfectly livable” house.

The work started in early April and was supposed to be done in October, at which point Turman would move in, stop paying rent at his old place, find a tenant for downstairs, refinance—and all would be dandy.

Turman had found Roseman through a recommendation from his real-estate agent—intelligence that he supplemented with some due diligence of his own.

“I searched on Google and didn’t find very much information,” he says about Life Long Construction. “I was led to believe that it was a company that had been in business for 20 years. It had an office on Capitol Hill, and a secretary.”

Less than two years later, Turman was forced to sell the house to avoid losing it to foreclosure. His contractor had walked
off the job, and he had had to hire workers to rip out poorly installed plumbing, fix the roof, and re-do everything that had been left in shambles.

Turman, 38, who works in nonprofit advocacy but is currently without a full-time job, ended up moving into the house five months behind schedule. But there was hardly a reward for the long wait: The place had no hookups for kitchen appliances, skylights had been installed in the wrong locations, and a variety of other things had gone wrong, says Turman. Basic items—like window ledges and faucet handles—looked like they could be ripped out with hardly a tug.

The toilets were useless—they did not flush things, they ejected them. Turman learned that cement had been poured down a sewage pipe, which caused flooding on the first floor whenever something went down. That problem had to be fixed fast; Turman claims he kept part of the pipe as a reminder, like an injured soldier holding onto the bullet that pierced him.

Turman later heard that some of the subcontractors hired by Roseman were third-party inspectors from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), who completed their plumbing and electrical jobs, inspected their own work, and signed off on it. DCRA investigated this claim but has not acknowledged any wrongdoing; one inspector involved, a DCRA employee, stopped working with the department more than a year ago, according to the department.

Despite Turman’s ever-expanding list of grievances, Roseman always acted genially, doing favors like picking up his client at his old apartment so the two could visit the job site, and offering constant assurances. “He kept on saying over and over again like a mantra, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to get this done,’” recalls Turman.

Turman stopped believing that soon enough. And, by mid-summer, Roseman had halted work for good, according to his client.

Roseman has a different spin on his times on Florida Avenue. He says he had no choice but to leave: “He kept adding and adding and adding work. So we had to say, ‘Chris, we can’t do any more work for that price!’” says Roseman. According to the contractor, there were always new side projects: more lights, a cathedral ceiling, TV hookups.

“He asked us—which he never really paid for—to put in locations for televisions in 10 different locations in the house,” says Roseman. “I mean, who does things like that? He wanted to be able to watch television, and he doesn’t even own a television!” (Turman insists he does.)

There was also the issue of Roseman’s wife, Claudia Louis. When the going got tough, Turman started calling her at her office at a lobbying firm, sending her e-mails, and pressuring her to lend her husband some money so his renovation job might be completed, according to Roseman.

Turman admits to making several calls to Louis’s office—but only because he’d been given her number and Roseman had said she was intimately involved with the company. On the question of additional renovation demands, Turman acknowledges that many things did indeed change along the way, but he signed an amended contract bumping up the cost to $178,000 to reflect his new expectations.

Turman eventually decided he couldn’t sort out problems alone with Roseman, so he called DCRA for help.

In a statement to Washington City Paper, DCRA director Linda Argo said her department had “easily spent more than 100 hours in mediation, walkthroughs of the property, inspections of the property, and legal time reviewing this case.” The result: Sheldon Roseman still has his license and Turman has been urged to get a lawyer, if he’s still dissatisfied.

“It is extremely rare for any regulatory body to revoke a home improvement business license based on questions of workmanship raised on a single job site,” Argo wrote. “However, repeated instances of poor workmanship can provide the basis for a license revocation.”

But have there been “repeated instances of poor workmanship”?

A search of D.C. Superior Court records shows that Roseman has had nine lawsuits filed against him since 2001. Some were in small claims court—demanding $5,000 or less in damages—but three were civil court cases (one was not directly related to a construction complaint).

Wilda Dear filed her claim in 2003 after Roseman allegedly failed to fix leaks on her roof that she says led to widespread mold, dripping, and a carpenter ant infestation. Unlike Turman, Dear never actually hired Roseman—she purchased her home in 1996 with a two-year-old roof and a 10-year warranty that Roseman was supposed to honor. Dear says she eventually won a cash settlement that made her “whole again,” and allowed her to fix all the problems.

Her take on Roseman: “He’s a guy who decided to do home repair, and he finds skilled workers. I’m not even sure he has the insight, the technical skills, himself. Personality-wise, he’s great. He means well. He wants happy customers. But he doesn’t have the ability to self-critique himself.”

To get his house in livable shape, Turman had to do pretty much what Dear did: hire other contractors, including Stuart Davenport of Davenport Design and Construction.

“We had to do a lot of work to get the place finished,” says Davenport. He remembers taking out bad drywall, rewiring “a lot of stuff,” and fixing an inexplicably placed hot water pipe that led to Turman’s toilet—when was the last time anyone wanted to wash their face in the toilet bowl?

“There were some really significant things that were screwed up. It seemed like it wasn’t really planned out very thoroughly,” says Davenport, who is an ANC Commissioner in Bloomingdale and owner of the Big Bear Café there.

All told, Turman says he paid out $170,000 to Roseman—the two agree on that sum, if nothing else—and between $80,000 and $100,000 to subsequent contractors. Once Davenport’s work was completed—it took him three months compared to Roseman’s year-plus on the site—Turman put his house on the market. It now has new brick stairs, decorative wrought iron banisters and bars, and overflowing purple flowers and shrubbery by the sidewalk. Turman sold it for $690,000 in late 2008.

Turman says he tried to purchase a condo in Columbia Heights after the sale but was turned down because of his credit score.

He lives in a small apartment north of Dupont Circle. Just last week, Turman received a letter from DCRA’s Argo, providing a hint that Roseman is perhaps not quite free and clear yet. She wrote: “DCRA officials are evaluating the evidence collected from your complaint, together with the evidence collected from other consumer complaints against Life Long Construction, to determine if there is good cause to suspend or revoke the company’s license.”

Image by Darrow Montgomery

Update:The Real World DC House: The Creepy Zone

If there is any lingering doubt that Real World is happening at 2000 S Street, I think we can put that to rest. I submit to you: Building plans for the inside of the Real World 23 house.

Oh yes, many of the classics are there: The confessional, the game room, the creepy control room areas, where producers quietly watch everything that's going on ten feet away. But where is the JACUZZI? I see no love pool in the plans.

Perhaps producers are worried that D.C. will not inspire the same hook-ups as Vegas, Austin and some of the other seasons. Thus, bedrooms come first! Make it through the door, and you've practically stepped into a bedroom.

One great way to ensure all those drunk confessional interviews: Catch those cast-members coming out of the bathroom at 3 a.m. (Actually, I'm a little unclear what those diagonal lines reflect.)

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