Landlords are back at the council, and this time they want mandatory eviction deadlines

Why this matters to D.C. renters and landlords right now

More than 670,000 people live in the District, and just over half of them rent. What the D.C. Council's housing committee decided to do, or not do, with eviction law directly sets the floor of security for those residents. Thursday's hearing on the Housing Investment Protection Act of 2026 drew roughly 60 landlords to the John A. Wilson Building and put two competing visions of the housing crisis on the same record, often in the same sentence.

What happened Thursday

The hearing featured a clash over how to balance renter protections with what landlords describe as an economic "death spiral." The Housing Committee took testimony on the Housing Investment Protection Act of 2026, which seeks to streamline eviction procedures. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson introduced the act on behalf of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who originally included a 45-day hearing deadline in her proposed RENTAL Act last year, a provision the council stripped out of the final law it approved.

The Housing Investment Protection Act would introduce a mandatory 60-day initial hearing period on lease violation cases. A separate bill, heard by the judiciary and public safety committee on Wednesday, would make it easier to evict squatters from short-term housing; landlords pushed for that to be expanded to cover long-term housing, too.

The Housing Investment Protection Act must undergo markups and requires two successful votes by the full D.C. Council before going to the mayor for approval. Nothing is law yet. But the lineup of witnesses Thursday made plain that the fight will be bruising.

The landlord case: 'It did very little'

Last September the council passed a bill that landlords called a win, one they hoped would restore eviction speeds back to pre-pandemic levels. Just a year later, around 60 of them came back to say the council needs to go further to protect housing providers from becoming insolvent.

"It did very little to impact the crisis," said Dean Hunter, CEO of D.C.'s Small Multifamily Owners Association, referring to last year's bill. "Our economic vacancy is at record levels, couple that with the fact that possession cases are taking 18 months to two years. You see the harm. A landlord's bills are still due, the mortgage is still due."

More than a third of D.C. landlords have rental delinquencies exceeding two years, according to the Small Multifamily Owners Association. Patrick McAnaney, a member of the Housing Production Trust Fund Advisory Board who consults with the mayor on affordable housing and serves as development director for Somerset Development Company, which operates more than 1,000 units in Wards 1, 4 and 6, said it will take "years of work" for evictions to catch up, and described the situation as essentially "trial-and-error mode."

Hunter was direct about the pressure campaign landlords plan to mount: "Let me be clear," he said. "I will not hesitate to use every means at our disposal, including going to Congress and, if necessary, the Trump administration." "I expect this to be a battle, and we're going to win," he told The Washington Sun.

The tenant side: 'Not realistic in practice'

Tenant advocates showed up too, and they pushed back hard on the bill's core mechanism. "Setting deadlines for the court, while at the same time piling on new processes and opening the door to a flood of eviction filings, is not realistic in practice and certainly would not make things move faster," testified Elena Bowers, the managing attorney of Legal Aid D.C.'s housing law unit.

Mel Zahnd, supervising attorney for Legal Aid DC, also testified against the bill. "Legal Aid has already seen repeated efforts by landlords of affordable buildings to clear out current tenants so they can engage in large-scale construction projects to add new, higher-priced units," Zahnd said.

Attorneys and tenant advocates urged the council to focus on preventing eviction cases from being filed in the first place. "Evictions should be rare and fair," testified Maya Brennan, chief housing officer of the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development.

The backdrop to that argument is grim. The RENTAL Act, passed by the D.C. Council last September and in effect since January 1, 2026, reduced the required notice period before most evictions can be filed from 30 days to 10, and 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. Local and federal funding for emergency rental assistance has dwindled; D.C.'s budget allocated $60 million to the program in 2024 but only $8.6 million in 2026.

Where the council members stand

Council member Robert White, at-large Democrat and housing committee chairman, said the council has addressed "almost every single request" from landlords over the past three years. He did not dismiss the new bill but offered figures meant to show progress: he estimated that completed evictions rose from 1,967 in fiscal 2024 to 2,614 in fiscal 2025, both up from 1,460 in 2016. Hunter's response was blunt. He called White a "tenant advocate," a label White's office has not publicly addressed.

Council member Brooke Pinto, the Ward 2 Democrat who chairs the judiciary committee, cited federal funding cuts as a compounding factor. "I want to note how frustrating it has been to see a Congress hold flat the funding for our courts over the last several years, even as we've seen a demand grow, and last year passed a budget that will lead to a $20 million reduction in our courts," she said.

Hunter expects Pinto's squatter bill to pass without too much struggle, but insists that landlords will push the Housing Investment Protection Act over the finish line, too. That confidence may outpace the math. Pinto herself pointed out that a court already starved of federal funds cannot simply be mandated into speed.

The longer arc

The Housing Investment Protection Act is part of a broader package. Mayor Bowser's office described it as reflecting "extensive engagement with District housing agencies, housing providers, tenant advocates, attorneys and other stakeholders to address implementation challenges and improve existing housing programs."

But the conflict Thursday reflected a real schism over which crisis is more pressing. Landlords say they cannot absorb another year of hearing delays and delinquencies. Tenant advocates say the court's calendar is already the problem, and mandatory deadlines without new judicial resources will simply produce rushed decisions, or, worse, a surge of displacement in a city where emergency rental assistance has been cut by roughly 86 percent in two years. (Analysis: both pressures are real and the bill does not address either the court-funding gap or the collapse in rental aid, the two factors both sides cited most.)

Landlords have already gone above the Wilson Building: housing providers asked House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer to investigate the District for ignoring the end of COVID-19 renter protections, which they say has blocked them from collecting back payments and evicting tenants in arrears.

What D.C. Residents Should Watch

• Committee markup date: The housing committee has not yet scheduled a markup session for the Housing Investment Protection Act. That session is the next formal step before any full-council vote. Watch dccouncil.gov for a notice.
• The squatter bill on Pinto's track: The judiciary and public safety committee bill, which would speed evictions from short-term housing, moves on a separate calendar and could reach a full vote sooner. Landlords want its scope broadened to long-term rentals before that happens.
• Emergency rental assistance funding: The FY2027 budget process is the only realistic vehicle for restoring the $60 million-to-$8.6 million freefall in rental aid. Any legislator who votes for faster eviction timelines while leaving that gap in place will face a direct accountability question from tenant advocates.
• Council testimony record: Written testimony from Thursday's hearing will be posted to dccouncil.gov. Legal Aid DC's Elena Bowers and the Small Multifamily Owners Association's Dean Hunter both filed detailed records, those documents are the best guide to the specific code changes being fought over.
• The November election overlay: Every council seat on the November 3 ballot belongs to a member who will eventually vote on this bill. Candidates' positions on the Housing Investment Protection Act have not yet been tested in debate, but the hearing record now gives voters something concrete to ask about.

Sources

• The Washington Sun, Zara Norman, Sept. 25, 2026
• The Washington Times, Sept. 24, 2026
• Mayor's Office press release on the Housing Investment Protection Act
• New America, "An Update on DC Evictions: June 2025 Through February 2026"
• D.C. Law 26-80 (RENTAL Act), D.C. Law Library