DC court: a conversion-era tenant protection did not die with the tenant
DC court: a conversion-era tenant protection did not die with the tenant
2026-09-09 · District of Columbia · Courts
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has held that a condominium conversion's tenant protections are not personal to the exempt tenant who earned them. A son who co-signed a lease with his low-income elderly mother, and who was a bona fide tenant when the building converted, remained protected after her death.
Potomac Place Associates, LLC v. Mendez, No. 23-CV-0271, was argued November 13, 2024 and decided April 10, 2025. Senior Judge Washington wrote for a panel including Chief Judge Blackburne-Rigsby and Judge Deahl.1
The facts
A lease at 800 4th Street SW was co-signed in 2003. The building converted to a condominium in 2006. The mother was a low-income elderly tenant, exempt from the purchase-or-vacate requirement that conversion otherwise imposes. She died in 2019. The owner then served the son a notice to purchase or vacate and sued to evict.
The holding
The court affirmed summary judgment for the tenant. Its reasoning did not turn on inheriting the mother's exemption. It turned on the son's own status at the time of conversion: “He is protected because, at the time of the conversion, he was a bona fide tenant who could not be evicted under the law.”
The protection attached to him, in his own right, in 2006 — and nothing that happened in 2019 detached it.
The court also noted in dicta that the Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act “may grant additional protections to low-income elderly and disabled tenants by limiting the grounds for their post-conversion eviction,” while expressly declining to decide that question.
Why a landlord-tenant case reaches an association
Because condominium conversion in the District does not empty a building. It leaves behind a permanent class of non-purchasing tenants living inside what is now an association's property, and this decision holds that their protections are more durable than owners have assumed.
Three consequences for a District association in a converted building.
The tenant population is a long-term feature, not a transitional one. Boards in converted buildings sometimes plan on the assumption that legacy tenancies will resolve themselves through attrition. This decision says a co-tenant who was in place at conversion holds their own protection, so attrition may not run the way the plan assumed.
The association's rules apply to occupants it did not choose. Legacy tenants are bound by the association's rules through the unit owner, but they have no vote, no assessment obligation and no direct relationship with the board. Enforcement in that triangle — board to owner to tenant — is slower and more awkward than enforcement against an owner-occupant, and a board with a written process for it is not improvising.
Resale disclosure has to be accurate about it. A buyer purchasing a legacy-tenanted unit is buying the tenancy and its protections. The relevant facts reach that buyer through the seller's own disclosure and, for building-level matters, through the association's resale certificate. Getting a tenancy's status wrong there is an expensive error.
The dicta worth watching
The court's observation that the conversion statute “may grant additional protections to low-income elderly and disabled tenants by limiting the grounds for their post-conversion eviction” — explicitly left undecided — is the sentence that will be litigated next.
If a later case answers that question in the affirmative, the practical effect for a District association would be a category of occupant whose removal is limited on grounds narrower than ordinary landlord-tenant law provides. That is not the law today, and nobody should advise as though it were. But it is flagged, in a published opinion, by the court that would decide it.
Where conversion sits in DC law right now
One clarification, because it is commonly muddled. The District's large 2025 overhaul of tenant purchase rights — the RENTAL Act — rewrote the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. It did not amend the conversion subchapter at D.C. Code §§ 42-3402.01 and following. Conversion procedure, the tenant-election requirement, the elderly and disabled tenant exemptions and conversion fees are unchanged.
So the framework this decision construes is the same framework that governs a District conversion today.
What to watch next
Any case that takes up the reserved question about post-conversion eviction grounds for low-income elderly and disabled tenants. Also worth watching: whether the Council revisits the conversion subchapter at all. It has left it alone through a period in which it rewrote nearly everything around it.
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