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Tenant buyout-transparency bill draws broad opposition over legal, administrative risks
Summary
Tenant organizers and Legal Aid backed disclosure and counseling requirements, but title companies, developers and DHCD warned the bill's mandatory floors, caps and TOPA-linked rules would create legal uncertainty, strain DHCD capacity and slow real estate transactions.
Witnesses at the Committee on Housing hearing said they broadly supported the idea of greater disclosure in buyout negotiations but raised sharp objections to the Tenant Buyout Agreement Transparency Amendment Act (Bill 206359) as drafted.
Erica Watlington, vice president of policy at the D.C. Building Industry Association, said the bill "represents a significant overreach" that would discourage voluntary agreements and impose new liabilities on title companies and housing providers. Gina Raymond of the D.C. Land Title Association testified that the bill conflates vacate buyouts with TOPA assignments in ways that could make settlement and title underwriting risky; she warned that escrow requirements and caps could create title insurance exposure.
Legal Aid and tenant organizers urged transparency and stronger tenant counseling. Mel Zahn, supervising attorney at Legal Aid's housing unit, said buyout agreements can exploit tenants but argued the bill's approach (statutory caps, minimums, and shifting enforcement to DHCD) "will fail to prevent exploitative buyout agreements" and that "tenant organizing is the essential solution." Advocacy witnesses recommended requiring clear notice, a list of legal service providers, and language in tenants' primary languages rather than rigid statutory floors and ceilings.
DHCD Director Colleen Green told the committee the agency supports disclosure notices and multilingual counseling referrals but opposes creating a new statutory enforcement program without specified funding or clear mechanisms, calling parts of the draft "a fundamental change to private contract processes" with potential constitutional and operational risks. The Rental Housing Commission and title attorneys said the statutory valuation factors in the bill are too subjective for the commission to implement reliably without more specific formulas.
The committee heard multiple suggestions for amendment: keep mandatory disclosure and referrals to free legal/housing counseling; decouple TOPA assignment from ordinary buyout filings; remove rigid national minimum/maximum formulas; and limit DHCD's role to data collection and referrals unless staffing and enforcement authority are provided. No vote was taken.
