Are Tenant Protections Making DC Rent Higher?

City Cast DC · May 22, 2025 · 22m

For decades, DC’s laws have been built to give tenants some muscle against landlords who might try to sell their buildings. But now that’s changing — with proposals before the DC Council that would shrink TOPA, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. In the old days, the politics of this would have been pretty clear, but nowadays there’s a twist, since some progressives have come to worry more about the supply of housing than the fate of individual tenants. Emilia Calma from the DC Policy Center has studied the issue and she’s here to explain.

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