Black mold by Thomas Anderson licensed under Creative Commons.

Tenants across the District have expressed concern with the city’s inaction around mold in housing, which can spark or exacerbate a plethora of health issues. Amid unanswered reports and unaddressed mold complaints, eight professionals and community members testified at a joint public hearing on December 9 about the Indoor Mold Remediation Act of 2019, which aims to improve enforcement and remediation.

There are two agencies that would be affected by the new bill: The Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA). DOEE licenses or certifies private mold assessors or remediators. At the moment, DOEE does not have the ability to independently inspect and remediate mold. DCRA is in charge of conducting housing inspections, but is not mandated to inspect for and cite cases of mold.

The new law would task DCRA with spotting and treating mold, and give it the power to cite landlords who don’t comply. The bill also requires DOEE to certify DCRA housing inspectors so they can handle mold complaints in-house.

The joint hearing consisted of the Committee of the Whole and Committee on Transportation and the Environment, led by Chairman Phil Mendelson and Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, respectively. Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, Sr. also attended the hearing and advocated for residents in his ward who have repeatedly filed complaints regarding mold in their apartment complexes, to little or no avail.

DOEE wants to handle mold

While DOEE was not able to comment for a previous story covering this mold bill, DOEE Director Tommy Wells oppsed the bill in a statement at Monday’s hearing. The Mold Remediation Act is unnecessary and all authority should be concentrated within DOEE, according to Wells, not split between two agencies.

“We should ensure that the indoor mold inspection remediation process is as streamlined as possible for district residents,” Wells said. “Tasking DCRA residential inspectors with this new responsibility would produce a redundancy with DOEE’s already existing work, which could result in confusion or an extra layer of bureaucracy for those residents seeking assistance. Given the significant burden placed upon DCRA, they are greatly concerned that taking upon these new responsibilities would cause the agency’s inspectors to be spread too thin.”

A representative from DCRA did not appear at the hearing, and we were not able to get a comment for this article.

Under the current law, the Air Quality Amendment Act of 2014, DOEE does not have the authority to independently send its own mold inspectors to remediate situations. It can only send a report with suggestions and recommendations to a landlord.

However, DOEE was allocated funding in the 2020 budget to hire two mold inspectors, whom will be brought on staff on January 2, according to Wells.

“We don’t currently have the capacity to just go in and remediate ourselves,” Wells said at the hearing. “The report goes to the owner to say that they’re responsible for this and to support the tenant. We believe that hiring inspectors will put us in a better position to do our own inspections.”

In the meantime, tenants are suffering

Many tenants and city officials, however, support the bill. There’s continued pressure to improve enforcement for residents who have experienced issues with mold for many months, according to White.

“This bill is so important in affecting the health of Ward 8 and the wellbeing of our residents,” White said at the hearing. “It seems to me that the standards for DCRA are so low, they come and do minimum repairs and people have to live in these conditions. The reason that they are forced to live in these conditions is because they’re saying, ‘we don’t have anywhere to put these people.’ This hurts my spirit to know that we are comfortable as a government to allow our residents to endure such deplorable living conditions.”

A handful of residents from Congress Park and other surrounding complexes testified at the hearing, citing month-long incidents of mold exposure. One resident testified that her doctor deemed her apartment as unsafe to live in, because of the increased effects the mold held on her childrens’ asthma.

Longtime DC resident Henry Morrison testifies about the mold issues he's experienced. Image by the author.

For Henry Morrison, a resident of DC since 1952, the mold remediation process has taken around seven months to resolve—and it was only addressed after he personally took action by hiring his own lawyers and assessors.

“I got caught in that DCRA will only come out if it’s water-involved, not just for mold. DOEE doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Morrison said at the hearing. “I was back and forth, which is why I ended up hiring a lawyer on my own as well as hiring my own mold assessor to come back when the assessor from the management company was finished. I had him come back three times to cross check theirs. All three times he found the levels extremely high, even after they supposedly remediated the mold. The company had to come back and do it all over again.”

There is no official announcement as to when there will be a vote on the bill, but Mendelson says he hopes to move it along as soon as possible.