‘Cat-sized’ rats taking over Dupont Circle apartment building, tenants say
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — Tenants at a Dupont Circle apartment building are searching for a solution to the building’s rampant rat problem.
Neighbors at The Flats at Dupont Circle on N Street NW told DC News Now the apartment building’s management and maintenance staff have been ineffective in remedying the rodent issue.
Tenants told horror stories of spotting “cat-sized” rats in their building.
“I was screaming bloody murder,” said tenant Aria Modanlo. “Having mice is one problem, but rats carry diseases.”
Modanlo said he’s had trouble sleeping since finding a rat in his apartment.
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Another tenant told DC News Now’s Randi Bass that he first noticed holes in fresh produce left out on his countertop. He said he set up a baby monitor overnight and caught rats crawling out to nibble on tomatoes and bananas.
When building maintenance came to try to fix the problem, he said they put poison in the walls that killed the rats. He said he could smell the dead, decaying rats for weeks after they died in the walls of his apartment, the smell making it almost unlivable.
Ben Lowe, another tenant at The Flats, is so fed up with the problem, he left evidence right where management could see it.
“I spent my own money on rat traps. The rat I caught was huge, about the size of a cat, I didn’t know what to do with it. So, I left it on the desk in the leasing agents’ office,” Lowe said.
He said he’s heard or seen rats in his apartment just about every day this month.
Lowe says the building told him he could vacate his apartment, but he wouldn’t receive any significant compensation for the rodent problem even after maintenance and exterminators came out at least five times to try to fix it.
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Kayla Goodman-Weinbaum lived in another unit in the building for a year before moving to a different studio apartment on the third floor. She says that’s when “all hell broke loose.”
She started hearing chewing and scratching sounds in the walls as she slept, keeping chilling audio recordings of the noises.
“A few times, I slept on my balcony. Now, I sleep with headphones in or play white noise,” Goodman-Weinbaum said. “The amount of sleep so many of us have lost is crazy.”
When we reached out to the company who runs the building, Equity Apartments, their rep said:
“We are addressing a rodent problem impacting a small number of units at the property. We have been performing barrier sealing as well as utilizing our pest control vendor to address this issue.”
Tenants say management finally sent a building-wide email addressing and acknowledging the rodent issue after DC News Now reached out Thursday.
Neighbors say there’s a group chat of about 50 tenants trying to band together to get management to act.
Some of them have already filed in small claims court.
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