More than a dozen current and former Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA) tenants protested unfair treatment from their landlord at ARHA headquarters (401 Wythe Street) Wednesday, Aug. 20.
The protestors held signs and shouted at ARHA CEO Erik Johnson and his staff. Johnson, who made a statement addressing resident concerns last week, told ALXnow that he inherited the organization’s problems when he started the job 11 months ago. He also acknowledged that residents have faced challenges, including delayed rental payments from ARHA to landlords, paperwork backlogs, caseworker abandonment, and more.
“There are issues that I inherited, and there continue to be issues that we work through to deliver better service to our residents and our customers,” Johnson said. “I said that from the beginning, on the general maintenance side, we had not done enough preventative maintenance, and because of COVID and other factors, our larger portfolio repositioning strategy is slower than it was anticipated.”
Organizer Loren Depina stated that residents have been overcharged for rent, have been evicted, and have difficulty contacting ARHA to address issues such as infestations, mold, and other problems.
“I have videos of mold, like people have mold falling on them while they’re sleeping in their house,” Depina told ALXnow. “Children who have respiratory issues that are getting worse because of these things. We’ve tried to have civil dialogue. We’ve tried to approach in good faith, and we were met with hostility and disrespect the entire time.”
Depina said she’s tried addressing issues at ARHA’s monthly board meetings, and that concerns have fallen on deaf ears.
“I’ve spoken to about 200 tenants, and the story is the same,” Depina said. “The story is, when I call, I don’t get an answer. If someone calls on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, these front doors are locked and no one answers the call. I do see that in the last 48 hours, they changed the signs on their door. But I did take pictures before all these because I was kind of thinking they have moldy appliances that are over 20 years old, that no longer qualify as safe in the house, ledgers being messed up, sending the wrong ledger information to tenants.
Johnson stated that some people have been evicted due to disorganization by ARHA.
“To an extent that there’s a liability, and we cause a condition, then we have some responsibility to rectify that,” he said.
Former City Council Member Mo Seifeldein also attended and shouted to Johnson that he was disrespecting residents by smiling at their concerns (see video below). Seifeldein, an attorney running in the 2026 Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-8th), who wore an Alexandria City Council polo shirt, made himself a go-between in the protest and arranged to create a list of the most pressing concerns to present to ARHA.
“This is wrong,” Seifeldein told ALXnow during the protest. “Our elected officials, including city council members, need to put more pressure on ARHA. I know there’s a limitation on what they can do, but I think they have the bully pulpit to make sure that these properties are safe for residents.”
Kaydrn Penn said she’s been overcharged for rent for years.
“They finally fixed it,” Penn said. “I’ve gotten some of the money back, and I asked them to show me the ledger so that I can see what calculations they came up to, how they came up to these figures, and they decided that they were going to ignore me. I sent a FOIA request because I repeatedly asked for my documents, for my records, so that I could see what’s going on, so that I could understand and see what’s going on.”
Annette Santiago is a resident and community leader for ARHA’s Hopkins-Tancil community.
“I communicate with my residents daily,” Santiago said. “They have been telling me for years that they’ve been having mold. They don’t change anything.”
Johnson said that he’s improving the organization.
“We’ve turned over over 20% of our agency and built an entire new legal, new management team from a standing stop in the last 10 months,” he said. “We’ve increased our rent collection from the low 80s to the beginning of the 90s, which means that we’re generating more revenue to do our things. We just got a score from HUD on the performance of our Section 8 program, and we got a 90 out of 100, which shows that we’re a high performer, right? Are we perfect? No, do we have a lot of work to do? Yes, we have a lot.”
Johnson continued, “We have a lot of work to do and a lot of trust to build, but do I think that I have the vehicle to do it, and do we have land that we can convert over the next 10 years to create the units for people that we need. So, I can control the organization, right? I can manage the people. I can work to build trust. The only thing that I worry about is the federal craziness that’s around us, which will impact my ability to meet my mission. That’s the part I can’t control.”
