The Fair Housing Practices Amendment Act of 2026 took effect Aug. 14, clarifying restrictions on fees for required services, including trash and third-party utility billing. A separate provision beginning Jan. 1, 2027, prohibits landlords from separately charging tenants for utilities used in common areas or vacant units.
I feel like this change is a great start, but it doesn’t go far enough to protect consumers. We need to ban rubs in dc so renters are only paying for utilities they actually use. This is personally important to me because after I testified about this Johanna Shreve who is the Chief Tenant Advocate of the District of Columbia told me that it would never get banned. I thought this was a super weird comment from the Chief Tenant Advocate. Now it’s my goal to prove her wrong.
6 days agobanrubs
Hi! We in Los Angeles got contacted with a question about RUBS by a tenant in DC, where would you recommend referring them to? Thanks!!
15 days agoaquasplit.app
Landlord perspective: DC's rule is forcing the good practice. On my fourplex the exact formula is printed right in the invoice, so every resident sees the math behind their share. Disputes went to zero. The landlords who get in trouble are the ones handing tenants a number with no breakdown.
21 days agostartwatching.me
THANK YOU FOR SPEAKING ON THIS!!! I had a shady landlord who illegally subdivided a rowhouse (unbeknownst to me at the time) and he never had the utilities lines separated out per unit so I was helping subsidize water/electric for the top floor unit of four guys 😡 now that we have this policy change passed we need to get rid of Johanna Shreve @dctenantadvocate for her messy comments about how this would never happen, she is clearly not serving District tenants in good faith if that is her shameful position!! @janeese4dc I hope your administration will be installing new leadership for the Office of the Tenant Advocate
21 days agoaquariustheonlyrealsign
So proud of you I know that this is like your thing yeah it needs to be changed because I’m not paying for somebody else’s water. Water is already high as enough as it is.
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