D.C. evictions hit a 12-year high, and Lewis George takes office in 57 days
A new investigation finds 2,420 households were evicted in fiscal year 2025 alone, up nearly 30% from the year before, as ERAP funding collapsed and the RENTAL Act tightened the screws on tenants. The mayor-elect inherits the wreckage on January 2.
In brief
The numbers landed the morning after the election
The timing was not subtle. As Washington woke up Wednesday to process the results of a historic mayoral race, The 51st, working with Street Sense Media and American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop, published a year-long investigation showing that evictions across the District have hit a twelve-year high, with 2,420 households evicted in fiscal year 2025 alone, up nearly 30% from the previous year and well above the pre-pandemic average of roughly 1,600 evictions a year.
Fiscal year 2026 is not much better. OTA data show 2,313 completed evictions through the end of September 2026. Two years in a row above 2,300. That is not a blip.
The report drops directly onto the desk of Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George, who announced her transition team on November 4 and launched a jobs portal for people interested in joining her incoming administration as she prepares to take office January 2, 2027. She has 57 days. The eviction numbers are already waiting.
What drove the spike
Two policy decisions, made in quick succession, account for most of the increase, according to housing attorneys and advocacy groups who spoke to multiple outlets.
First: money. The District's budget allocated $60 million to the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) in 2024, but only $8.6 million in 2026. That is an 86% cut in two years. The $7 million proposed for FY 2027 would represent a further 20% cut from FY 2026, which itself was already a 70% cut from FY 2025. The FY 2026 funding level, while inadequate, still prevented eviction for 747 households. The math is brutal: less money in the safety net means more families in housing court.
Second: the law. Two major policy changes left renters with fewer options when they hit a financial setback: steep cuts to ERAP and the passage of the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants, and Landlords Amendment Act, known as the RENTAL Act, which was intended to speed up the eviction process.
The RENTAL Act, passed by the D.C. Council and in effect since January 1, 2026, reduces the required notice period before most evictions can be filed from 30 days to 10. It also allows courts to resume adjudicating eviction filings where the tenant has a pending application for rental assistance, cases that had been on pause since 2020.
Other provisions shortened the notice landlords must give tenants before filing an eviction for nonpayment of rent from 30 days to 15, removed the requirement to include rent ledgers and payment histories with filings, and gave judges greater discretion over whether to pause cases when tenants have a pending rental assistance application.
Jen Jenkins, a senior policy attorney for Legal Aid DC, put it plainly to The 51st: "Once you take away those protections ... you get where we're at now, which is record-high evictions."
The legal representation gap compounds everything. Among tenants represented by an attorney throughout their entire case, the percentage who stayed in their homes dropped from 77% in 2022 through 2024 to 63% in the first half of 2026, a trend the report attributed to changes in ERAP. Of the eviction cases closed by one legal aid program during that same period, only 12% of tenants had an attorney representing them throughout.
Who gets evicted
The high rate of evictions reflects severe housing cost pressures faced by renters with low incomes. There are 41,000 D.C. renter households with incomes under $50,000 who spend more than half of their income on housing. These are not people who can absorb a missed paycheck or an unexpected medical bill. One bad month and the landlord can file within ten days.
An eviction can follow a tenant for years, appearing on tenant screening checks, preventing them from finding new housing, and affecting their credit. For families with children, the damage goes further. Eviction in fiscal year 2025 was the highest level in at least a decade and 64% higher than the five-year pre-pandemic average, and advocates note that eviction is considered an adverse childhood experience because of the long-term damage it does to a child's mental well-being and educational success.
The geography of displacement is not random. The resulting evictions are not felt equally across the city. Ward 7 and Ward 8 residents, who are predominantly Black and lower-income, face the heaviest concentration of filings. Landlord-tenant court at D.C. Superior Court sits at 510 Fourth Street NW. For many tenants east of the Anacostia, getting there alone is a half-day commitment.
What Lewis George said then, and what she faces now
Lewis George was not a bystander to this debate. She was one of three members of the D.C. Council who voted against the RENTAL Act, saying in a statement, "We will not be able to evict our way to affordable housing."
She also introduced her own protective measures. Lewis George put forward the Extreme Heat Eviction Prevention Act of 2025, which would prevent tenant evictions on days when the temperature is predicted to exceed 95 degrees Fahrenheit. That bill did not pass under Bowser. It could now.
Her campaign promises were specific. Lewis George's campaign centered on D.C.'s affordability crisis, pitching residents on solutions like universal affordable childcare and adding over 70,000 new units of housing. She has made ambitious promises about housing affordability and building 72,000 new homes. Those are long-horizon commitments. The families showing up in housing court next month need something sooner.
At her first post-election press conference Wednesday, Lewis George kept her language on the budget cautious. Facing a multimillion-dollar deficit, she called for a forensic analysis of government operations and spending. When asked how she plans to pay for her priorities while facing a shortfall, Lewis George said her administration will look for savings within existing government operations. "We're going to try to find efficiencies and savings where we can find them," she said.
That framing worries tenant advocates. Finding "efficiencies" is not the same as restoring $50 million to ERAP. The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute has said the city would need to commit at least $100 million a year to ERAP alone to prevent mass displacement. Lewis George enters office with a projected budget deficit of anywhere from $650 million to $850 million that she will have to close through some combination of new revenue and spending cuts.
The RENTAL Act's defenders and what they say
It is worth being precise: not everyone who backed the RENTAL Act wanted evictions to rise. In late 2025, the D.C. Council approved the RENTAL Act as a sweeping revision of pandemic-era tenant protections that proponents said would address problems with unpaid rent and make the city more attractive to developers of affordable housing.
Small landlords, particularly those who own two or three units and depend on rental income to cover their own mortgages, argued that the pre-RENTAL Act system left them exposed for months or years when tenants stopped paying. The Small Multifamily Owners Association said "the RENTAL Act did little to resolve this crisis for housing providers, large or small." Even the law's critics concede that ERAP's dysfunction hurt landlords too: money pledged to cover back rent sometimes took months to arrive, or never did at all.
The council voted 10-3 to approve the RENTAL Act, which exempts some buildings from legislation protecting tenants and speeds timelines for evictions, aiming to combat a growing eviction backlog and unpaid rent that some councilmembers said were stalling affordable housing investment. Councilmembers Janeese Lewis George, Brianne Nadeau, and Trayon White voted no.
Now Lewis George moves from "no" vote to the person who controls the pen. She can propose ERAP budget restorations. She can ask the council to revisit RENTAL Act provisions. She can reinstate the automatic eviction stay when a tenant has a pending ERAP application, a protection the law removed. Whether she does any of those things, and how fast, is the first real test of whether the campaign promises land as policy.
The police chief search runs in parallel
Lewis George is handling multiple urgent transitions at once. On public safety, the mayor-elect said she has hired a firm to begin searching for a new city police chief. That firm has conducted and assisted over 200 police executive searches, including in Baltimore and Boston. Lewis George said she asked them to work "as swiftly as possible," adding the emphasis would not be on just filling the job but on finding the right person to lead the department.
The two issues, housing and public safety, are not unrelated. Research on cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles links elevated eviction rates to increased street homelessness, which in turn concentrates in neighborhoods that also see higher rates of violent crime. What happens in D.C. Superior Court's landlord-tenant division touches the work of the Metropolitan Police Department whether anyone says so explicitly or not.
Council vacancies add more uncertainty
Lewis George will not have a full council to work with when she arrives. White was forced to resign from his council seat because of a legal technicality, and Lewis George is the sitting Ward 4 council member, meaning there are fresh vacancies on the 13-member body that is already welcoming two new faces elected Tuesday night. Until those Ward 4 and at-large vacancies are filled, the council could move slowly on any legislation Lewis George sends over.
The District also faces a projected budget gap for fiscal year 2028, which Lewis George must begin closing almost immediately after taking office, since the budget process for FY 2028 starts in earnest in the late winter. Any serious ERAP restoration goes into that fight.
What D.C. Residents Should Watch
ERAP line item in the FY 2028 budget proposal. Lewis George must submit her first budget in the spring. The dollar figure she proposes for Emergency Rental Assistance will be the clearest early signal of how seriously she treats the eviction crisis. Watch for whether she gets anywhere close to the $100 million that the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute says is necessary.
RENTAL Act revisit. The incoming council, with new members in Ward 1 (Aparna Raj) and the at-large seats, may have the votes to modify or repeal provisions of the RENTAL Act. Lewis George can either push for that or leave the law intact. She has not committed publicly to a legislative fix.
ERAP operational reform at DHS. Even before new money arrives, the D.C. Department of Human Services controls how ERAP applications are processed. Advocates have documented long delays and confusing eligibility rules. The Lewis George transition team could order administrative fixes that do not require a budget vote.
Ward 4 special election timeline. The D.C. Board of Elections must set a date for the special election to fill Lewis George's council seat. Until that seat is filled, Ward 4 residents have no council representation. Watch dcboe.org for a posted schedule.
Housing court data for Q1 FY 2027. The first quarter of the new fiscal year runs October through December 2026. If filings at D.C. Superior Court's landlord-tenant division stay above 1,200 per month, as they were in February 2026, that tells you the RENTAL Act's effects are still compounding before Lewis George has signed a single bill.
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CAN I KICK IT? screens New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument, on Aug. 22. (Courtesy SHAOLIN JAZZ)
The live-cinema series CAN I KICK IT? returns to the National Mall this month with what its producers are calling the "Gangsters on the Mall" chapter of their free outdoor summer run. On Saturday, August 22, the SHAOLIN JAZZ production brings the 1991 crime classic New Jack City to the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument for a night of film, music, and community under the DC summer sky.
What sets the event apart is the sound. As the film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones builds an original score in real time, reimagining one of the most iconic crime movies of the ’90s through hip-hop, soul, funk, and more. It is less a movie screening than a live performance built around the film.
The details:
Film: New Jack City (1991), with a live soundtrack by DJ 2-Tone Jones
When: Saturday, August 22 — seating opens at 7:30 p.m. (bring lawn chairs and blankets); film begins at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument, Independence Ave SW & 15th St NW
A parking note from the organizers: expect road closures and restricted parking east of 14th Street NW due to a separate race event in the District. Roads west of 14th Street NW will be accessible and available for parking.
New Jack City is the second of three screenings in this year’s free CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series, which opened with Black Panther at Skyland Town Center and concludes with Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial on September 5. Produced by the Washington, DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, the series has presented more than 150 live cinematic experiences at venues across the country, from Lincoln Center to SXSW.
"I wanted to be able to tell good stories with substance and remove the ‘ego’ out of the art," said Andrew Huang during a recent interview. Now, he’s building his career at the intersection of discipline, creativity and innovation.
Andrew Huang, founder of New Place Studios. (Courtesy photo)
As a Chinese American, Huang was reared with a deep respect for hard work, consistency and excellence. He describes his childhood as "not so affluent" and later attended college to hone his passion for videography. "In college I tried to do something I loved, which was video, but along the way I knew that I had to find a job. And so I thought, ‘what was the low hanging fruit to get to that stable 9 to 5 job?,’" he stated.
Later in life, Huang found himself working for corporations where his creativity was often limited, eventually leading to burnout. "I worked in a corporation for a long time and there were a lot of missing pieces. I wanted to fill in gaps missing in corporate video production," said Huang.
He later described how his upbringing and a mindset of "survival" led him toward a corporate career. However, his desire for balance and authentic storytelling ultimately pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap.
"I founded a new place where you can create video and film with ‘substance and style,’" said Huang. His desire for work-life balance and passion for storytelling naturally evolved into a small business based in Virginia. With the launch of New Place Studios, the entrepreneur quickly found himself reconnecting with the values that would become the foundation of everything he creates behind the camera.
Huang said being a business owner has allowed him to first embrace himself. While others may see video as simply capturing moments, he sees it as a way to preserve stories that inspire, connect and leave a lasting imprint.
By combining cinematic visuals with cutting-edge production techniques and a keen understanding of branding, Huang helps organizations and individuals communicate their vision with purpose. He said understanding a client’s "why" serves as the compass for delivering the services they need.
One benefit of working with a small business, he said, is that clients get to see the production process unfold through a micro lens while working with the same faces throughout the entire project. "The work feels personal," said Huang.
Huang does not regret leaving behind the flash-over-substance mentality and corporate hustle culture. That does not mean the Asian American entrepreneur has been without challenges in the industry. "It’s relatively hard to find other Asian American creatives or people who would want to work with me in the DMV," said Huang.
He identifies the industry culture in which everyone is trying to blend in, creatives may fear displaying their Asian identity and some feel pressure to adopt an American corporate persona. He also points to what he describes as a level of gatekeeping within the industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 statistics, Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs own more than 3 million businesses and employ 5.2 million people in the United States.
After tapping into organizations such as SCORE, which offers free small business mentorship, New Place Studios has become a trusted creative partner throughout the DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia). The company produces a range of creative services, including commercials, corporate branding, documentaries, film, 2D animation, motion graphics and photography.
For Huang, entrepreneurship has become more than a departure from corporate life. It has given him the freedom to create with intention, build meaningful connections and tell stories that go beyond the surface.
The 2026 CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
For three Saturdays this summer, some of Washington’s most familiar public spaces will do something they rarely do after dark: fill up with blankets, lawn chairs, and the sound of a movie being scored live, in real time. CAN I KICK IT?, the traveling “live cinema” series produced by the DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, is bringing a free outdoor run to the city — pairing three era-defining films with an original soundtrack performed on the spot by DJ 2-Tone Jones.
The premise is what sets it apart from a normal screening in the park. Rather than simply pressing play, 2-Tone Jones builds a score as the film unfolds, pulling from hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and sounds from around the world. The result, the organizers say, is less a movie night than a one-time performance — the same film you know, wired to a soundtrack you have never heard and will not hear again. Guest DJs warm up the crowd starting at 7:30 PM before each 8:30 PM screening.
The 2026 outdoor schedule
All three events are free and open to the public.
Saturday, August 8 — Black Panther at Skyland Town Center. A pop-up marketplace and community activities kick off the evening; guest DJs at 7:30 PM, film at 8:30 PM. Marvel’s superhero epic gets a one-night-only live score in Southeast DC.
Saturday, August 22 — New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument. Seating begins at 7:30 PM; the film starts at 8:30 PM. The 1991 crime drama plays out at the foot of one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks.
Saturday, September 5 — Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial. Seating at 7:30 PM; film at 8:30 PM. The series closes with Brian De Palma’s crime saga against the backdrop of the Memorial, scored live from start to finish.
First up: Black Panther at Skyland Town Center on August 8. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
A DC company with a national footprint
SHAOLIN JAZZ describes itself as a Washington-based arts company working at the intersection of music, film, art, and culture, and CAN I KICK IT? is its signature production. According to the organizers, the series has staged more than 150 live cinematic experiences around the country — at performing arts centers, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions including Lincoln Center in New York, SXSW, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Republic Square in Austin, the Tacoma Armory, and The Cary Theater.
“CAN I KICK IT? has always been about creating a shared experience,” said Gerald Watson, co-founder of SHAOLIN JAZZ. “When you combine iconic films with live music in public spaces, something special happens. People aren’t just watching a movie — they’re experiencing it together. That’s what makes these nights so memorable.”
Cinema as a community event
The DC run lands as cities across the country look for new ways to activate public space through arts and culture — and this series is a straightforward pitch for how to do it: take a landmark everyone already knows, add a film everyone has an opinion about, and let a live soundtrack turn the evening into something neighbors experience shoulder to shoulder. Families, film buffs, and music fans are all invited, and admission won’t cost a thing.
The CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series runs August 8, August 22, and September 5. All events are free; check SHAOLIN JAZZ (shaolinjazz.com) for the latest details and any weather updates before heading out.
