This D.C. Housing Complex Is So Bad It Might Get a Tax Break

It’s been four months since Wanda Gore has been able to use her elevator.

The one closest to her second-floor apartment in The Gale Eckington, a hulking housing complex on Q Street in Northeast D.C., has been shuttered since early February. To get outside, the 55-year-old Gore, who is blind and uses a wheelchair, has to roll down three long corridors to reach an elevator on the far side of her building.

“If it’s a fire … if something was to happen to me, I can’t even get downstairs,” said Gore, who has lived at The Gale for two years.

The building’s problems don’t stop at elevator outages. More than 250 building violations have been issued at the property since fiscal year 2023, amounting to more than $185,000 in fines, according to the D.C. Department of Buildings. Property owners Jonathan Rose Companies and JBG Smith Properties, which acquired the building in December 2022, had resolved 75 of those violations and paid 7% of the fines as of May 28.

But last month, Ward 5 Council member Zachary Parker proposed a potential $21 million solution to those problems: a 10-year tax abatement to pull The Gale out of what he called a “death spiral.” Parker worked with The Gale’s owners earlier this year to develop the proposal, which is capped at $21 million and would start in 2031. It will only apply if all outstanding issues are fixed by that time.

“We see this as an option to preserve affordable housing in a part of the city that needs it, to provide critical repairs to residents who are living in deplorable conditions, and [as] providing a path forward for the management team at that property,” Parker told NOTUS.

More than 250 building violations have been issued for The Gale since 2023, amounting to more than $185,000 in fines. Lillian Bautista/NOTUS

The tax break is not sitting well with The Gale’s current and former residents. They describe living for years with rodent and pest infestations, mold, break-ins, foul odors, AC issues, incorrect billing and structural damage. When residents have complained, they said property management company Gates Hudson has either delayed maintenance or not responded.

“Prior to me being in this wheelchair, I worked every day of my life. Since the age of 16, I’ve been putting in taxes,” said Gore. “Here you have these big-time millionaires and billionaires, and they get an exemption for it.”

Gates Hudson did not respond to a request for comment. Jonathan Rose Companies, a New York-based real estate developer with $4.6 billion in assets under management, pointed to public testimony a JBG company representative gave May 13 before the D.C. Council’s Committee of the Whole as it considered the tax abatement.

“Rising operating costs, mounting tax burdens and income loss from nonpayment of rent have pushed the property into a deficit,” said Lily Goldstein, the representative. “Without a credible path to recovery, that deficit will deepen and long-term affordability becomes untenable.”

A Way Out

When introducing his bill, Parker wrote that the building’s problems stemmed from “challenges receiving rent from tenants, which has in turn complicated efforts to reinvest in the building.” More than half of The Gale’s 603 units are designated affordable housing.

D.C. has the country’s highest rates of rent nonpayment. The city has grappled for years with how to address the issue, which can prevent housing providers from performing necessary maintenance. In 2025, the Council took action by passing a law that expedited the eviction process, “rebalancing” pandemic-era tenant protections.

Some of The Gale’s tenants have defaulted on rent, but others are legally withholding it until repairs are made. While the Department of Buildings can issue citations for housing violations that carry fees, housing attorney Amanda Korber said it’s generally viewed by tenants as ineffective at enforcing those repairs. In the 2024 fiscal year, the Department collected $2.6 million in fines, but referred $25 million more to the city’s collections unit.

“There’s not a great mechanism for tenants to force their landlord’s hand,” said Korber, a supervising attorney at Legal Aid DC. “A lot of tenants end up in a position where they feel like all they can do is withhold their rent, because that’s the leverage they have.”

Tax abatement is a creative, but controversial, tool the D.C. Council has used to keep developers’ business in the city amid a challenging fiscal landscape. The tool has incentivized developers to flip office buildings into housing downtown. It was also used, despite concerns raised by the city’s chief financial officer, to give the Commanders a $1.48 billion break when building the RFK Stadium last year.

Those abatements have left money on the table as D.C. navigates a $1.1 billion budget deficit.

“As a city or state, you are giving up revenue to do this, so it is a kind of spending, and I think it should probably be looked at that way,” said Peter Tatian, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

Parker called this tax abatement proposal a “one-off” that wouldn’t suit every distressed affordable housing property looking for relief. But Tatian said other cities and states are looking at this problem more holistically.

In 2022, Illinois’ state housing authority created a $28 million pot of grant money for subsidized housing properties with outstanding capital improvement needs. It preserved more than 3,800 units of housing, according to the National Housing Trust. The state authorized another $30 million in February. Oregon, Seattle and Minnesota have set aside similar “stabilization funds.”

“They try to address more of those broad issues. Not just focusing on giving financial assistance to properties, which many of them do need in the short term, but also looking at how we can address some of [what’s] causing properties to be in distress to begin with,” Tatian said.

‘A Cop Out’

Parker’s proposal would not be the first time the city has given this property, and its owners, a break. JBG Smith Properties received $9.34 million from the District of Columbia in tax rebates from 2017 to 2022, according to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer. Before JBG acquired the property in 2015, its previous owners also received a $1.8 million tax abatement.

When Jonathan Rose Companies acquired the building with JBG for $215.6 million in 2022, it pledged to spend $9 million improving common areas, amenities and “resident experiences.”

“Under current ownership, The Gale Eckington has undergone meaningful investments in sustainability and operational efficiency, spending nearly $5 million to date, including installation of rooftop solar, water-saving systems, LED lighting, roof replacements and infrastructure upgrades,” Goldstein testified on May 13.

Residents have not felt the effects. Mike Hilty, who said he was housed at The Gale through a program for veterans experiencing homelessness, said he tried to get pest control out to his roach-infested apartment for six months before management contacted someone.

Residents of The Gale have repeated complained about broken elevators and pest issues. Zara Norman/NOTUS

“It’s humiliating,” said Hilty, who has lived at The Gale for more than eight years. “Your house is supposed to be your sanctuary. I would describe it as hell.”

Parker said he proposed the tax abatement on the back of conversations with residents.

“[Residents] have routinely complained about conditions at the property: rats, mold, violence, and that’s how we first started interfacing,” Parker said. “We then worked with management to address some of those concerns.”

The Gale’s owners hired D.C. law firm Goldblatt Martin Pozen LLP to lobby the D.C. Council in 2025. A lawyer met with Parker’s chief of staff, city planning officials and Council Chair Phil Mendelson nine times from September to March about “matters related to real estate development” and “tax abatement,” spending a total of $1,400, per city ethics disclosures.

Residents have struggled to get an audience. Tenant Bhavna Sivasubramanian has reported the elevator outage to Gates Hudson and the Department of Buildings many times, she said, as well as her door’s handicapped push button not working.

Bhavna Sivasubramanian says its “really exhausting” trying to get repairs completed. Lillian Bautista/NOTUS

If a building’s elevator breaks, it must be fixed “as soon as reasonably possible,” per D.C. law. Emails dating back to February reviewed by NOTUS show that management has promised repairs for months with no particular timeline.

“It’s a fight,” Sivasubramanian said. “You can’t just expect that if you go through the process that they have, that you’ll get what you’ve asked for. You have to keep following up and keep asking. It’s really exhausting.”

The law also requires landlords to keep properties up to code regardless of whether the tenant is paying rent or behind in rent, Korber said. But countless unanswered maintenance requests later, tenants wonder if a tax break is the only way to force repairs.

“Getting the tax abatement is kind of a cop out, because they get free money,” said Sivasubramanian. “But they will actually have to fix the problems.”