$210,000 Settlement Reached Against Company That Ran DC Apartments Like Hotel Rooms

• September 28, 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

The interior of one of Ginosi’s listed DC “apartels”

In the midst of short-term rental regulatory hearings earlier this year, DC Attorney General Karl Racine filed suit against Armenian company Ginosi USA for operating four apartment complexes in DC as “illegal hotels”.

Yesterday, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced that the office reached a settlement regarding two of the buildings. Daro Management Services and Daro Realty have agreed to return approximately $210,000 to tenants of the two rent-controlled buildings where units were being advertised for short-term rentals.

The suit complained that Ginosi partnered with the above companies to run apartments at The Phoenix (1421 Massachusetts Avenue NW) and The Rodney (1911 R Street NW) similarly to hotel rooms, advertising these living quarters as “apartels”. Ginosi had allegedly operated up to 46 units in these buildings as apartels since at least August 2015.

The $210,000 in restitution will be transferred to long-term residents of those buildings via rent refunds or $132 monthly credits for each month the tenant lived in the building while Ginosi ran its apartels. An additional $100,054 penalty will be paid to the District.

“Rent-control laws are crucial to maintaining affordable housing in the District, and this settlement helps prevent those laws from being flouted,” Attorney General Racine said in the statement.

Settlement has not yet been reached in regards to the other two buildings cited in the lawsuit.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/settlement_reached_against_company_that_ran_dc_apartments_like_hotel_rooms/13065