Washington City Paper: Despite Repeat Complaints, D.C.’s Public Housing Residents Face Delays in Receiving Basic Repairs

Katherine Dailey, an affiliate of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University in Washington, D.C., writes about DC’s Public Housing ongoing issues with repairs and breaking DCHA guidelines.

Policy Housing attorney Makenna Osborn is featured in this piece:

Makenna Osborn, a policy attorney with the Children’s Law Center, says that in many cases after public housing residents file complaints about their housing conditions, even when they do everything by the book, the reporting process still fails. Osborn says her organization has worked with residents who are given work order numbers but are told later that no case with that number exists when they call back to check on the status of the request. “It just disappears,” she says. “There’s no way for [the residents] to track it,” though she adds that upgrades to tenant-facing software could mitigate this issue.

Photo credit: Potomac Gardens public housing complex in Capitol Hill Credit: Darrow Montgomery/file