date change due to rain! Sat. Sep. 30th at 11 am - 3pm!
Community leaders are gathering Saturday, Sept. 30th, to launch a campaign for Ridgecrest Condominiums in Washington, DC’s Ward 7. It was condemned last year and the low-income owners were issued an order to vacate due to the unsafe conditions. However, many of them are still unmoved.
Instead, the Ridgecrest residents continue to appeal to their Condominium Association and have resorted to fundraising, above the cost of the condo fees they already pay, in order to contract the needed repairs themselves.
“One older resident has sat still, surrounded by mold, in the dark, throughout this hot summer, with no air conditioning, without an operating refrigerator in which to keep food,” their attorney, Johnny Barnes, wrote via social media after a day in court on their behalf. “Her testimony last week broke my heart.”
They’re hoping, perhaps, a non-profit developer can help with the renovations without displacing them amid the wealth, transportation and unemployment disparities that plague the District. “What we really want to do is get the bylaws changed and maybe even change it from a condo to a co-op,” says one tenant in a new 5 minute-long docu-drama they developed with Grassroots DC to raise awareness.
It’s actually more of a short horror film with real footage of the buildings punctuated by one tenant “haunting” the scenes, appearing in the window and door between fast cuts and even faster talk from an actor who plays a real estate agent. They need to raise some $50,000 for immediate repairs.
“They were never looking for luxury condos, but they do want clean, decent, safe, affordable, well-managed homes,” Barnes wrote. “…The city has cited Ridgecrest for code violations dating back to 2017. Conditions were so bad that they were placed under an Order to Vacate by DCRA [DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs] in February of 2022. Two seniors were living without electricity and three of the eight buildings were without heat because the boiler hadn’t been cleaned for years and was in danger of literally exploding. Many of the Unit Owners are elderly and, after working much of their lives, have no options.”