Stairwells littered with trash, urine and feces. Elevators dead since July. Air conditioning off since the first of that same month. That is the picture D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb's office paints of Delta Pearl, the 10-story, 166-unit affordable apartment building at 1400 Florida Avenue NE, in a new lawsuit accusing its owner and developer of letting the property collapse into what the city calls extreme and pervasive disrepair.
Schwalb announced the lawsuit on September 1 against Delta 2 Owner LLC, property manager DP Management LLC (doing business as Faria Management), and developer Buwa Binitie, according to 7News WJLA. The suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, invokes both the city's Consumer Protection Procedures Act and its Tenant Receivership Act, according to the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia — a combination that lets the city seek both restitution and penalties for deceptive practices against tenants while also asking a judge to install an independent receiver to force repairs. “The extreme level of disrepair and neglect and the health risks to tenants are unacceptable,” Schwalb said, according to WJLA. He added that conditions at the building are shocking, as has been ownership's refusal to promptly address them.
The lawsuit alleges tenants have gone without air conditioning, working elevators and secure entryways, per WJLA's reporting. Department of Buildings inspectors documented stairwells strewn with trash, debris, urine and feces, and the city's attorneys say broken access systems allowed non-tenants to sleep in common areas and occupy vacant apartments. City inspectors also found trash buildup, rodent and roach infestations, water damage, exposed electrical wiring, inoperable fire-safety equipment, and unrepaired damage from a February fire, WJLA reports.
According to the D.C. Department of Buildings, the agency schedules requested inspections within 15 business days and issues a Notice of Infraction to landlords when violations are found.
A Building That Reopened With Promise in 2023
Delta Pearl was built in 1979 as affordable senior housing and is identified as Delta Towers in public records. It was acquired in 2022 by Delta 2 Owner LLC and redeveloped by Binitie's firm, Dantes Partners, alongside Gilbane Development Corp. and Delta Housing Corp., according to the attorney general's complaint. It reopened in November 2023 with 166 units, 51% of them designated affordable for residents earning under 80% of the area median income, the complaint states. Less than three years later, the same filing describes a building in near-total breakdown.
According to the attorney general's enforcement filings, cited by The Washington Informer, Delta Pearl racked up 199 unabated property maintenance violations over a 15-month span, with 169 of those issued in 2026 alone. Seventy-one were classified as emergency violations requiring correction within 24 hours. The AG's office separately said inspectors documented nearly 200 unresolved housing code violations at the property, WJLA reports.
Elevators Down for Months, Fire Damage Left Unfixed
Elevator failures were a recurring emergency long before this summer's total outage. The Washington Informer's report on the enforcement filings shows Department of Buildings inspectors issued 15 emergency notices over nonfunctioning elevators between December 2025 and August 2026, including six in July alone — the same month WJLA reports the building's elevators went out of service entirely and its air conditioning system shut down on July 1. In a 10-story building, that outage has forced elderly and disabled residents to navigate flights of stairs described by inspectors as littered with trash, debris, urine and feces.
Much of the building's security breakdown traces back to a fire on the seventh floor in February that displaced nine residents. The blaze damaged the building's electrical system and knocked out its key fob security system entirely, according to the attorney general's complaint, leaving exterior doors and residential-floor stairwells unlocked and unmonitored for six months. The lawsuit alleges that failure let non-tenants sleep in common areas and occupy vacant units, compounding the disrepair inspectors were already documenting elsewhere in the building.
Developer Admitted Financial Strain, City Says
During a meeting with District officials on July 30, Binitie said Delta 2 Owner lacked the financial resources to fix the building's conditions and stated his intention to relocate tenants, remove “bad actors,” and shut the building down, according to the Washington Informer's account of the enforcement filings. That statement, per the same filings, ran directly counter to the city's expectation that ownership maintain habitable conditions for residents still living there.
Binitie has offered a different framing in public comments. He told WJLA that Delta Pearl's conditions are serious and that residents deserve safe, properly functioning homes, while also saying the ownership group is reviewing the attorney general's complaint with counsel and will respond through the judicial process. He said the property's financial crisis stems from prolonged court delays and widespread rent delinquency, noting that roughly two-thirds of tenants are behind on rent, leaving the building with more than $1,800,000 in unpaid rent and resident balances and a loss of more than $1 million in 2026, according to WJLA. Binitie said those conditions do not excuse residents' experiences but are essential to understanding the property's situation, and said ownership remains committed to addressing immediate problems and working with the District, lenders and other stakeholders.
One Developer, Fifteen Subsidized Properties
Binitie's reach across the District's affordable housing stock is extensive. He is the beneficial owner of 15 affordable housing properties across Wards 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, each held under a separate limited liability company, all of which receive public housing subsidies or government financing, according to the attorney general's complaint. Faria Management operates 12 of those properties. Binitie previously chaired the D.C. Housing Finance Agency's board of directors and served on Mayor Muriel Bowser's Saving DC's Rental Housing Market Strike Force in 2021, according to the agency's own materials.
A Fall 2024 report from the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development said approximately 22,000 units representing 48,000 residents were at risk of foreclosure due to delinquency.
The lawsuit seeks an emergency court order requiring urgent repairs, a preliminary injunction for broader fixes, restitution for affected tenants and civil penalties, WJLA reports. The Tenant Receivership Act gives the city a path to petition for a court-appointed receiver to manage the property and force repairs independent of ownership, per the attorney general's complaint.
Part of a Broader Enforcement Push
The case follows a pattern the attorney general's office has been building for nearly a year. In November 2025, Schwalb secured a $41 million judgment and a $1.1 million settlement against the owners and former manager of Marbury Plaza in Ward 8 over widespread habitability neglect, using the same two statutes now cited against Delta Pearl — a judgment the Office of the Attorney General called one of the largest housing conditions penalties against a landlord in U.S. history. That same month, Schwalb and Councilmember Robert White introduced the STRONG Homes Amendment Act, aimed at reforming the Tenant Receivership Act and expanding the AG's authority to intervene against negligent landlords. Hoodline also reported in July on a separate suit the office filed over a Columbia Heights gas explosion, part of the same enforcement strategy targeting landlords accused of ignoring long-standing violations.
