Tenants Reach Historic Settlement with Apartment Owners
Langley Park Development at Center of Decades-Long Code Enforcement Crisis and Recent Daytime Murder of Infant
LANGLEY PARK, MD — After more than a decade of struggling to improve conditions in their apartments, tenants of Bedford and Victoria Station Apartments, together with CASA and attorneys from Nidel & Nace, PLLC and The Donahue Law Firm, LLC, have come to a settlement with then owner Arbor Realty Trust, Inc., an out-of-state investment firm.
“When tenants come together and to speak out, they have the collective power to meaningfully change their lives,” said CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres. “These brave tenants have put landlords on notice that they either do the right thing by maintaining safe and secure housing, or pay the consequences in court.”
The settlement will bring to a close what started as a rent strike in October of 2020. Across four years, a dedicated group of tenants, including a core of 20 leaders, met biweekly to organize their neighbors into the fight for better living conditions and to stave off eviction.
“There were many weeks when we didn’t know what to do,” said Lead Plaintiff Maria Lara. “We didn’t know how to pay our rent, we didn’t know how to get the office to fix our deteriorating housing conditions. We never gave up. We relied on each other to stick together as a community.”
The settlement will compensate all of the tenants of the almost 600 unit building who “opted-in” to the class action and lived through the abhorrent living conditions from 2018 to 2021.
Originally constructed in 1950, Bedford and Victoria Station Apartments spans 23 acres and several square blocks of Langley Park with 587 units across 35 buildings. Its pivotal location between two future purple line stations made it the target of predatory ownership for decades as owners sat on deplorable conditions waiting for steep increases in property value.
After years of tenant complaints and extensive news coverage regarding deplorable living conditions, Prince George’s County aggressively sought out new ownership, exercising its power under the County’s Right of First Refusal protection. These actions resulted in the purchase of the property by local real estate firm Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners and Nuveen Real Estate in 2022 which have begun the long process of repairing decades of disinvestment.
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With over 155,000 lifetime members across 46 US states, CASA is a national powerhouse organization building power and improving the quality of life in the working-class: Black, Latino/a/e, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities. CASA creates change with its powerbuilding model blending human services, community organizing, and advocacy in order to serve the full spectrum of the needs, dreams, and aspirations of members. www.wearecasa.org