D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sues vacant property owner, alleging tax evasion

In July, D.C. Council chair Phil Mendelson (D) advised The Washington Write-up that the setting up experienced been taxed as vacant for just six months in the previous 13 yrs and had been reclassified by the D.C. Section of Purchaser and Regulatory Affairs at minimum 31 periods in the previous 10 years.

Individuals reclassifications, Racine’s accommodate alleges, are a end result of the building’s owners’ “repeated misrepresentations to the District in their constant exertion to stay away from an elevated tax burden,” relationship as early as 2006, falsely indicating that the building was occupied. For much more than 10 many years, the fit reads, the “formerly stately home has sat conspicuously vacant: boarded up, overgrown, and with masonry degrading, the roof in a state of perpetual and noticeable decay.”

The suit identifies George Papageorge as the building’s operator he owns the home via the company 10th and C Road Associates. Papageorge has prevented spending the vacant home tax charge by regularly listing the creating as occupied, the match suggests — a violation of the city’s Bogus Claims Act, which was amended by the D.C. Council in 2021 to include tax-related transgressions.

D.C.’s challenges with vacant, blighted properties have not long gone away, residents and officers say

According to D.C. tax records, Papageorge owes far more than $116,000 in taxes on the home. Papageorge could not be arrived at for comment Tuesday.

Very last yr, The Write-up documented that even even though the Department of Client and Regulatory Affairs experienced flagged approximately 3,000 houses in the metropolis as vacant or blighted, and just a portion of them were being currently being taxed at the suitable rate. Racine’s match notes that oftentimes these homes attract nuisance activity and can build perilous conditions for little ones.

“Too numerous District people are having difficulties to obtain risk-free and cost-effective sites to live, when additional than 3,000 households sit vacant across the city,” Racine mentioned in a statement, noting the city’s suit in opposition to a vacant-home proprietor was the to start with of its sort.

Keeping property homeowners accountable for vacant and blighted properties in the District has been a result in celebre for Mendelson, the council chair, who is working for reelection this calendar year. He claimed in his personal statement, “I’m hopeful that this match will deliver a information that the District is significant about fraud and that these LLCs should make an energy to put their properties back into use, alternatively than continue to test to sport the system.”