Submitted by ahtigers10 t3_113vqeg in washingtondc
Gift article link for those without a subscription: https://wapo.st/3YNUVwM
Absolutely outrageous and egregious mismangement of the District’s voucher program. I’m not sure I would even call it “mismanagement.” It’s more like a deliberately designed scam to line the pockets of developers. Important read in light of the recent encampment clearings.
Yep, the article mentions that exact scheme. Pure profiteering off poverty. Disgraceful.
What is it in the US where we just can't do anything efficiently or competently.
Almost every program is rife with incompetence, profiteering, and fraud.
> What is it in the US where we just can't do anything efficiently or competently.
I mean - there ARE well run government programs. You just don't read about them because no one publishes new articles about things going well.
A lot of the time the culprit is regulatory capture, where the industry that is meant to be governed by an agency ends up defining the terms of its governance. A famous recent example is Boeing and the FAA, among many others. It seems likely that DCHA is extremely cozy with landlords and this is one result.
Efficient for who, is the question you should ask yourself.
Indeed
Well, its disgraceful on multiple levels. Disgraceful of the developers/owners to reconfigure buildings in this shameful way. Disgraceful of DC officials to pay the money, either knowing or deliberately failing to know of the bogus reconfiguration. And disgraceful of any politicians and their voters who allow this to continue to happen.
And each of these rooms has a window and closet?
Fun fact- A closet is not legally required for a room to be a bedroom.
There are sq ft, height/width, and access requirements.
Correct. Here are the requirements from DCHA. See the last bulletpoint. A bedroom pretty much just needs to be over 70 square feet. It mentions "living spaces" needing two means of egress (door & window), but not bedrooms specifically.
I saw a place with an internal 'bedroom' that had a tiny window in one wall facing the rest of the apartment. Just so they could say it was a bedroom lol
lived in a "two bedroom" basement in mount pleasant when i first moved to DC; my room was a 10x8 box with a 7' ceiling and no window.
I was viewing apartments and one had a door with windows for the same reason lmao.
In fact they do. And each closet has an additional bedroom within it.
I dont see how that is worse than what the article describes. That is generating extra bedrooms for people that would have not existed in the city.
Because four walls don’t make home. There needs to be minimum living space requirements, natural light requirements, etc. Things humans need to be healthy.
When you go through HCVP you need to go through both the BBL inspection and HCVP inspection. Landlords can't just do whatever they want. Once you start adding multiple units they have start getting rent control from DC.
Is unhealthy a euphemism here?
Said every slumlord..
You'll live in your glorified closet that makes you feel horribly depressed as if you're an animal in a cage and you'll like it!
Not sure you have seen the news about McPherson, but my gut says that this bedroom is better than living on the street. I have never lived on the street, so maybe I am mistaken.
Yes, presumably it's better than sleeping on cold concrete in the rain. Still doesn't make it a humane living situation.
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Do u think a 70 sq ft bedroom is similar to a 18 sf house?
Relatively speaking, yes. The average bedroom size is 200 square feet. 70 square feet is 35% of that. Sure, it's greater than 9% of that, but they're both pretty small in comparison to 200. I'd bet neither meet minimum living standard requirements.
It's similar to how cockatiels can live in smaller cages, but they need a 24" x 18" x 24" cage to be happy.
Not to mention other things that humans need to live, like natural light.
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Can confirm this is happening in CH—SFH houses that can’t be profitably flipped for “luxury” condos are being restructured this way. Not the way to stabilize neighborhoods, DC.
Omg
Do you know if 3-4 bedrooms in a unit means at least 3-4 are housed in those units or would it be just one person?
damn almost like the government keeps messing up the housing market and it would be so much better if they got out the damn way!
The "free market" is not going to house the homeless.
Heavily regulated housing with huge subsidies obviously ain’t.
Way less homeless existed in the US before they outlawed SROs and rooming houses and flop houses and a million other dignified housing options. And now, as the article states, the government is actively harming the housing market making it so it is far more expensive for the vast majority of people. All around failure.
There’s a flip by me that now has 9 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and is rented for almost $7,300 on a voucher. The market rent for that area for a townhouse that isn’t super huge would be more around $3,500 maybe. It has been off and on the market at 1.4M listed as an investor dream.
Absolutely outrageous.
I wish the listing was still active or available it was kinda hilarious. It started as one 3 bed normal townhouse with basement on a corner lot with nice yard and parking. They took the first house and basically left it and ripped out the parking and yard, connected and added a second 2 level and then extended the upper floor over the other house. I have no idea what the inside looks like as the one unit was newly constructed but it’s got 2 AC units and now window units in all the rooms. It was absolutely constructed this way for the per bedroom situation.
what’s the address? it could still come up
I found the old listing. Apparently the 2 units are one property.
https://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/438-19th-St-NE-20002/home/10114618
A few more photos here
https://www.movoto.com/washington-dc/438-19th-st-ne-washington-dc-20002/pid_3qf7p97uah/
This home is currently off market - it last sold on February 10, 2020 for $470,000. Based on Redfin's Washington data, we estimate the home's value is $1,252,098.
Wow, I thought “this sounds like the monstrosity in my neighborhood” and sure enough it is. Hello apparent neighbor?
Most likely kingman park it’s just so massive. It was a cute house before
Many of the vouchers are for 1 year. Due to upward pressures/inflation of rent due to how vouchers are administered, people have way less chance to afford something when voucher expires.
Long time tenants in rent controlled units have a target on them since the vouchers are SO much more lucrative.
This has been well known, but glad the WP is writing about it again. The 2019 articles re: Sedgewick Gardens and what a debacle that has been were excellent.
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>nd then extended the upper floor over the other house. I have no idea what the inside looks like as the one unit was newly constructed but it’s got 2 AC units and now window units in all the rooms. It was absolutely constructed this way for the per bedroom situation.
You flip houses? We might need to talk. Looking to purchase later this year!
I don’t flip houses, I just live near this one and walk by it all the time. I’ve been in the first house years ago before it was sold to a developer. It was a normal, nice standard smaller townhome on a nice corner lot. Now it is what it is
Guh. I hate developers who break up homes, they are the worst. I do like when they develop corner lots and leave them as SFH - not divided up multi-family dwellings. Those are the worst!
They actually added a home to it. The first home is the same
Wow. Just realized that is where "guh" came from
I'm finally moving out from a building in Cleveland Park under DARO/Borger management, who are well known for their relationship with the voucher program. They are the ones who recently got in a huge amount of trouble for more voucher misconduct. Props to WaPo for continuing to cover this so well. This new article does a good job of explaining the mechanism behind how landlords actually milk the program.
I could rant for hours about my experience living at the Parkway, but I don't want to dump a laundry list here of complaints and crazy stuff that we've seen or had to deal with. This building is nuts. We have incidents almost daily. However, people will use these problems as ammo to build prejudices against voucher recipients and disdain for the system as a whole, and I don't think that's fair. It's misdirected anger. After living in this building for years and learning so many of their stories, the voucher system has done a lot of good for a lot of people. It's a very flawed system; a good idea mired with flawed execution. And the solution to many of its problems is to further strengthen the system, not strip it of its utility.
After living here for 4 years, I've seen 2 main issues with the voucher program:
The city does not provide enough follow through and support for voucher residents. Flat out. Some of these people are coming in with severe mental health issues and drug/alcohol addictions. Some people are even coming in with very little personal belongings - no furniture, no place to sit, etc. These people need more help. They are not set up for success.
The landlords that so egregiously take advantage of the system (as outlined in the article) also need to follow through on handling the day-to-day incidents that arise from taking on so many individuals that may have severe problems. Not only that, they need to do a better job of dealing with the select few individuals who are a nexus from where an overwhelming majority of the problems stem from.
I think if landlords are going to try and cash in on the voucher system, then they need to step up and actually create a more safe & hospitable place for all residents, vouchers and non-vouchers alike. That in itself is where the greed lies. If landlords load up on voucher recipients to make extra money but then also have to pay a bunch for security, extra maintenance, etc., then their profit motive is diminished. They can make more money by caring less about the safety and living conditions, leading to the chaos that is notorious in some of these buildings.
Very well stated. And yes, the problem is absolutely the government and not the voucher recipients. DCHA is failing absolutely everyone except for the landlords/developers.
good write up but you know this aint never happening
What building?
The Parkway on Connecticut Ave. there was just a shooting there a couple of weeks ago
The shooting was ridiculous. It was the last straw for a lot of folks. Many neighbors I know are moving out or are planning to move ASAP.
I lived in the Parkway for 10 years and moved out just after they had competed all of the upgrades and transitioned all of the 2 bedrooms to 1 bedrooms and studios. We had violence issues in the building and with a young child, just couldn’t justify staying there. The voucher recipients are given keys and then forgotten. And the residents who pay good money to live in that building are also suffering. It’s a terrible situation that sounds like it’s only getting worse. We still have friends in the building with kids and they’re desperate to find another housing situation.
I think we may have chatted on Nextdoor around the time of the shooting! This sounds familiar.
I also know some of the people with kids who have been around for a long time, and they told us that they've never seen the building in such a state. Like, this is the worst it has been. Even since I moved here in 2019, the building has been getting worse year by year. And 2023 is off to the worst start yet.
The situation here after the shooting is - believe it or not - worse than it was before. Like, I thought the shooting would be the pinnacle of craziness and the building would cool off and chill for a while (especially with new temporary security at night). But we've still had drama almost every single day - sometimes multiple times a day.
The silver lining with the shooting is that it prompted folks to come together to organize. Our ANC rep, Sauleh, has been a rockstar and has helped connect a tenants association and set up monthly meetings with residents, MPD and other organizations. Maybe things will finally turn around given these new developments, but I am not optimistic.
Unrelated to vouchers, but I looked at an apartment in that building in 2019. The rent was really cheap (for CP)...turns out it was really cheap because it didn't have a kitchen sink. The apartment employee said the last tenant would run to and from her bathroom sink to cook. How tf is that legal?
(In retrospect I probably should have reported it but it didn't dawn on me to do so)
But this is DC?
wut?
One of the most funded social services cities in america
No
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Yes
Years of no oversight lead executive agencies to do shit like this unchecked for years. Where was Anita Bonds?
https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/tensions-cleveland-park/
This one goes into detail re: a hearing before Bonds in 2019, these issues were known and likely a feature not a bug. https://thedcline.org/2019/05/31/a-connecticut-avenue-apartment-complex-shows-effects-of-a-legal-loophole-and-cracks-in-city-housing-subsidy-programs/
Interesting. It mentions in these articles that the DC Council eventually passed a law closing the loophole that previously allowed landlords to keep rates high in rent-controlled units after they were leased by a voucher-holder who then moved out, rather than having to revert back to the rent-controlled rate. It remained unfunded for a while, but was "eventually" funded it seems. Do you know if this law is still on the books? Is this loophole closure still being funded? Can't seem to find any recent information about it.
Right. This *IS* Anita Bonds fault. No one elses. We need a targeted campaign to make her - and Vincent Gray - to encourage her to resign.
lol really? all her fault? come tf on
I personally think we should hold those who have oversight roles accountable. So, yes, I believe the buck stops with Anita Bonds. She should have provided adequate oversight. Truthfully, if she had provided overisight we would not have these entrenched problems.
Y’all are delusional lol. From being so awful they were placed in federal receivership in the 90s etc they been a mess for decades
Frankly a lot of it is on the tenants and residents of the city as well. DCHA doesn’t exist in some kind of vacuum lol
Since you think, I am delusional, I should share my logic with you. First, as the central and chief policy-making body for the District of Columbia, the Council's mission is to provide strong, innovative and effective leadership for the benefit of residents across the city. In Anita Bonds case, she was given oversight over the District of Columbia’s Housing Authority (DCHA). The last Director of DCHA, Tyrone Garrett, openly admitted his strategy was to “remove about a quarter of its public housing stock from federal ownership” and “demolish or gut 10 apartment buildings”. You would think, with such an aggressive and/or controversial plan that Anita Bonds would closely monitor the process. Nope. Instead, she neglected her duties, and allowed for occupant rates to dip, housing to become inhabitable (mold, persistent crime, etc.), and basically she didn’t care!
Now tell me again, how oversight wasn’t her job?
The Council's central role as a legislative body is to make laws.
Where was she???
But in an interview for this article, Donald acknowledged the agency’s failure to properly assess rents has led to overpayments. She said her stance changed recently after talking with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials who issued a sweeping report in September, which flagged the problem alongside the agency’s failure to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing for its residents. The report depicts a housing authority in disarray and at risk of defaulting on its agreement with the federal government.
“We are going to fix all of this,” Donald said.
lol, lmao
She used to run the city’s failing foster care agency, too. She just keeps getting leadership roles despite a bad track record. Why?
In THIS FCCKING BOOMTOWN, it's not a what you know, but who you know game. She's besties with Queen Muriel the First. That's all you need to know. https://dcist.com/story/21/08/13/dc-housing-authority-board-authorizes-two-year-contract-for-interim-director-brenda-donald/
I think Bowser is trying to win the all time record for putting horribly unsuited people in charge of things. Corruption at its finest.
Right?? Fire her into the sun. (Spoiler: Bowser won't).
dcha been a sh*tshow for decades this is not on her.
the agency, like so much of dc govt, is unfixable
>Referenced event can be seen
>
>here
>
>. Note: You can literally see she had been crying.
Then explain why she was crying recently?
the american dream is to figure out how to operate a marginally illegal scheme and get rich off of the suffering of poor people
AKA Capitalism.
Dont see how this is the fault of anyone but DCHA
The WP wrote @ this in articles re: Sedgewick Gardens back in 2019. Huge transfer of public $ into the hands of a few private landlords and management companies. Was discussed in hearings before Bonds back then too and at many community meetings. So much waste, fraud and abuse and probably kickbacks, too.
The level and impact of the disfunction here is staggering: Overpaying in some areas, causing working class families to be priced out of the market. Underpaying in others, causing unnecessary displacement. Not providing adequate services to people to ensure these buildings don't turn into slums.
Shameful work by the city, and great reporting by WaPo.
On a much less serious note, I had to do a double take when I saw that that woman's son was named River-Phoenix.
I lived in a rent controlled building in NE managed by a company listed in this article and am almost positive they were taking advantage of this program in the building I was in from 2018-2020. The building was recently renovated when I moved in, although I quickly learned that the renovations were done in a very sloppy manner.
After a couple of years, things really started to fall apart and tenants that moved in after renovations quickly moved out. I stuck it out through the end of 2020 when I noticed the type of tenant moving into the building started to rapidly change. A chain smoking drug user moved into the apartment across from mine and rapidly destroyed the apartment. Her behavior was so erratic that I called the social work crisis line a couple of times after she spent hours running up and down the hallway without any apparent purpose.
Anyways, by the time I gave notice, the management company was so eager for me to move out that the property manager told me to not worry about cleaning up the apartment and I would get a full return of my security deposit so long as no major appliances were missing. Based on the entirety of my experience with the property management company, I expected they’d screw me on the security deposit, but I wound up getting the entire amount mailed to me a few weeks after I moved out.
You guys are overestimating the “corruption” here. Used to work directly with DCHA. And if anybody knows anything about them, they are lazy af and absolutely do not work. Once the lease is in place they have no incentive to get off their asses and reassess any market rate properties. Sometimes they go months without sending funds and have to send 3 months worth of rent at once.
They’re getting the shit back in RE taxes anyways so they don’t give a shit.
Not conservative, but the right does have a point when it comes to making it easier to fire lazy government employees. Pay more competitively if that's what's needed to get better staff, but this shit should justify clearing house.
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> You guys are overestimating the “corruption” here.
There's a tendency on Reddit to assume corruption when incompetence is a better answer.
Maybe the biggest news here is that WaPo is doing proper investigative reporting on local issues. This has been a long long time coming.
It is an absolute travesty that Anita Bonds was re-elected. Asleep at the wheel during a housing crisis.
The number of perverse incentives that landlords have to be as shitty as possible is out of control. I know it's bad here but it's like this in every city; at some point this country just decided to sell out to slumlords for some reason
This article doesn’t mention that housing authorities almost always pay a percentage above the Fair Market Rate set by HUD in order to encourage landlords to take voucher tenants, who tend to be seen as higher risk (even if that perception isn’t justified). IIRC, the last town I worked in Massachusetts was authorized to spend as much as 180% above the FMR. The article does make it sound like HUD isn’t happy with what the city is doing, but I don’t know if it’s accurate to suggest the practice of overpaying itself is something unique to the city (or necessarily against HUD rules). People with more federal housing experience, feel free to correct me if I’m off base.
DCHA’s analysis of what “fair market rent” constitutes is also comical though. For example, they pay the same rent amounts for a property in Georgetown as they do in Eckington.
Even if DCHA is authorized to pay a certain percentage over market rate, it appears they are still going way over even that by simply paying out the cap based on the number of bedrooms with zero consideration for actual market rates in a given area. Just no accountability whatsoever.
I believe DC landlords are required to accept vouchers and it would be discriminatory for them not to, so there's no need to overpay
I work in housing and voucher programs, in compliance. Not in DC proper though.
The FMR isn’t necessarily the required rate or a limit. Some program structures do a comparable unit analysis to determine if the rent is reasonable. And sometimes a certain percentage above the FMR is authorized, as you said. It depends on what kind of voucher and how it is funded.
Also want to add that the comment in this particular article about concerns of vouchers leading to increased rent pressure is insulting in how offbase it is.
DCHA is at 187%. I can’t remember exactly how it got there but I think it groups SAFMRs (ZIP codes) into neighborhoods, and “does analysis” to arrive at some number. DC is probably one of the most data rich (and should be data driven) cities in America, I shudder at the thought of DCHA’s analysis.
If you don’t mind me asking, when you say compliance, is that both tenant, landlord, PHA, or all of the above compliance?
I don't work for a PHA but I work with them on certain project types. It's all tied together, really, so aside from regulations that apply specifically to a PHA's program, it's all kind of in the same basket because what a tenant has to do is connected/related to what a landlord has to do - they're just steps in the overall process.
I visit 24 CFR (the regulations relating to anything HUD, which includes PHAs) to reference something probably about once a week on average. Since my organization serves tenants, it's usually related to what we must do as a recipient of funding from various streams or to what a tenant must do as a participant in one of those federally funded programs. Some of our clients are tenants in project-based voucher programs.
On the SAFMR and grouping/analysis, I believe HOC in Montgomery County does something similar in doing their rent reasonableness analyses, but it might be on a more granular basis.
You’re not wrong. DCHA’s issue is that they aren’t doing any rent reasonableness assessments and haven’t done so for years. Paying over FMR might make sense in certain areas, but DCHA isn’t following through on their own policies to assess that.
how come no comments here are talking about (both tenant and landlord) complaints about behaviors of people who move in to these buildings and the subsequent destruction they cause
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didn't the District use to do this with hotels, as well? Looks like they've leveled up.
Still do...
This is absolutely disgusting. DCHA director should be fired immediately. If something like this can’t get DC residents on their feet I don’t know what can.
Here's the thing, landlords don't have to accept vouchers. They can give the middle finger to DC government and rent their apartment to people with money.
So you kinda have to overpay on units. DC might be going too high, but this is the problem with vouchers. Landlords need to accept them, and there is zero requirement for them to do so.
That's actually not true. Vouchers are legally viewed as a source of income, which cannot be discriminated against in Washington DC. Now, do some landlords still do that? Sadly yes. And they can be taken to court by the applicant for some good money and/or accommodation if the applicant is wise to the law.
Landlords and property managers are required, by law, to accept vouchers.
That being said, DCHA (now split into two organizations) was so messed up that the application process would get hung up for months, during which time another person with money ready to go can walk in and apply to take the property. The landlord can continue to list the property until payment is received by an applicant, and it's easy to see arguments on both sides for discriminatory behavior.
It's all a mess.
Thats not true, DC is a income source blind city. If you reject due to voucher you can get sued.
A fair point, and if the overpayment were the only issue with this whole thing, then we could probably learn to live with that. Unfortunately, the problems run so much deeper than just that. Right now, DC has created a system that incentivizes landlords to cash in without providing any other essential services whatsoever, setting the entire living arrangement up for failure. Much like the federal student loan system where colleges don't care about your ability to afford college or whether or not the quality of the education is worth the price of tuition. They can jack up tuition as high as they want and phone it in knowing they get their check from the government up front. Both systems rely on overpayment with the good intention of expanding access to those who could otherwise not afford it. But without actually accountability, this is how they inevitably end up.
The complex I live in is currently going through the TOPA process and the fear from older white residents that this will happen in their buildings is real.
I have a very good friend who has a house in Capitol Hill. When his wife got posted to the state deparments foreign service they stated renting for around 3k a month. After 3 years they got the offer to have their home rented by a voucher recipient and are now getting $5k a month. Keep in mind this is on top of the money they get from the federal government to supplement their mortgage while they’re overseas AND they have free housing overseas in addition to the absurdly generous benefits of a federal employee in foreign service.
It’s a nice home and they’re providing a safe and clean place for a family to live so I don’t blame them for taking it, but it pisses me off that at the state and federal level, waste and lack of oversight are so rampant.
This is why I wish republicans would stop being a party of hate and counter identity politics and get back to addressing problems like this so the parties could balance each other out again.
>New yearly funding for housing vouchers and subsidies, cash support for low-income families, and increased pay for early childhood educators $ 161,000,000
Looks like if we follow the money, it may lead back to Brianne "crime doesn't exist" Nadeau.
i'm team #fuck12 but even Courtland Milloy quotes Jack Evens noting we are getting almost nothing for our 5.5billion dollar welfare budget (to say nothing of terrible education outcomes despite another 2.5b a yr going to that...) https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/14/juvenile-crime-parents-dc/
If DC rent subsidies weren’t so generous, Landlords would have no incentive to rent their $800,000 properties to single mothers with bad credit and bad kids.
Disclaimer: This is highly speculative but it might explain things.
Ah, yes, Executive Director of District of Columbia Public Housing, Brenda Donald, looked as if she had just had a good cry at a recent public event. I could not put my finger on it, as this was a celebratory event, I kept thinking why would she look so sad. This article MIGHT explain why she had been crying: most likely the Mayor let her know the article was coming out and she would need to resign.
Referenced event can be seen here. Note: You can literally see she had been crying.
Shes about to get the boot it seems!
It sure DOES seem that way. On a personal level, I thought she was lovely (someone I would not mind having tea with). On a professional level, I kept thinking why is she in this role?
There was a similar story from NYC a year or two ago
If this is such an easy money making thing why aren’t more people doing it? Why is there a huge waiting list of people with section 8 vouchers and so few places available? There should be an abundance of places and a shortage of available voucher holders. That’s definitely not the case.
This is simply and purely corruption. The essence of the DC government.
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empty the prisons, fill them with landlords
I don't think people recognize that landlords and developers are assuming the responsibility and risk of developing higher density housing as opposed to the city building exclusively low-income housing. It's better to blend people with low-income into the community so that they can benefit from the infrastructure and resources that come with a higher incoming earning population.
That's the whole reason DC's strategy is to get developers to offer a percentage of their housing as low income in exchange for grants and tax breaks. This even helps old people who owns homes cash out on the equity of their home and move into something they can afford.
You guys want DC to handle housing? They built a park in my neighborhood on land they already owned and they paid the contractors over half a million dollars for a simple playground. The ANC's wanted a million.
If you are a DC landlord you cannot discriminate on source of income, credit score, criminal history. Sure the rent is guaranteed but so long as they are under the HCVP. If you want to evict someone for non compliance in dc it takes about 6-12 months.
Complain as much as you want but their is a housing shortage in DC and I can tell you I rented a property and I would say about 90% of the inquiries were HCVP and there were about 200 inquiries. That's a ton of people on HCVP looking for homes and they are often looking for housing for 4 people or greater. HCVP also does not pay as much as market rates in the area. There are a ton of people looking for homes and only developers are willing to undertake the risk of HCVP because they have the scale to do it.
There's so much licensing crap you have to do just for 1 unit, if they made it easier and shortened the court process in case something adverse happens then more landlords will sign up for HCVP. Out of the 31,744 affordable units and 790 housing providers in HCVP there are only 227 providers with 1-2 units and only provide 322 units.
This is all cute, let's get cranky in the comments. How much would you all pay to keep the homeless off the streets? What is the acceptable cost of poverty?
88138813 t1_j8sl26c wrote
I'll one up this article. The amount that DCHA pays in rent is purely based on the number of bedrooms a unit has, whether the configuration of the unit makes sense or not. I've seen people buy 3 level rowhomes, make each level it's own unit and jam 3-4 bedrooms in each level to the point of there not even being living space. It's just a kitchen and 3-4 bedrooms in a ~800 sq/ft unit.
Since DCHA only cares about the bedroom count, they'll pay the same exact rate for this ridiculous apartment custom-designed to game their system than they will for say a standard ~2000 sq/ft 3-4 bedroom rowhome. Times that by 3 units in the former single family home, and the landlord is pulling in somewhere around $12-$15K/month depending on the property's subdivision. It's totally ridiculous.