DC Eviction Law 2025: Dangerous Crimes and TOPA Exemptions

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, amending D.C. Official Code § 42-3505.01(a-1)]

That's a meaningfully lower bar than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard a criminal court applies, and it means the civil eviction case can move on its own timeline, independent of whether police ever make an arrest or a prosecutor ever files charges. A housing provider relying on this track needs to be prepared to actually prove the qualifying conduct to the civil court's satisfaction, not simply assert that it happened.

4. Why the shortened timeline is genuinely faster, not just a smaller number

A 10-day notice instead of 30, and a summons compressed to at least 14 days, means the entire pre-hearing runway shrinks from what could stretch past 60 days under the standard track to something that can move substantially faster. Layering the 20-day hearing deadline on top means the court itself is now bound by a statutory clock it wasn't bound by before, for this specific category of case.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, amending D.C. Official Code § 42-3505.01(c)(2)(A)(ii)]

For a property manager, the practical shift is that a case meeting this narrow definition can reach a hearing in roughly three weeks from filing, compared to the standard track's typically longer runway. That compression only applies once the underlying conduct is correctly classified as qualifying; misclassifying an ordinary lease violation as a dangerous crime to access the faster track would leave a housing provider trying to prove something the evidence doesn't actually support.

5. The second, unrelated half of this law: new TOPA exemptions

Separately from the eviction changes, the same act amends DC's Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, adding roughly 20 new categories of property transfer that are exempt from TOPA's tenant right-of-first-refusal requirement. These live in a new section, 42-3404.02b(b).

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, amending D.C. Official Code § 42-3404.02b(b)]

Confirmed examples include transfers from a decedent's estate to family members, and transfers between spouses, parents and children, siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren. Domestic partners are included in that family-transfer category as well. A separate exemption covers new-construction transfers to a specifically named beneficiary, as long as that transfer happens within 15 years of the building's completion. Covenanted affordable-housing transfers, where the property carries an extended affordability commitment, also qualify. And the admission of limited partners or minority-interest investor members to an ownership entity is exempted, since that kind of transaction doesn't functionally change who occupies or controls the building day to day.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, amending D.C. Official Code § 42-3404.02b(b)]

6. Why these two changes ended up in the same bill

Nothing about the eviction provisions and the TOPA exemptions is substantively connected. They're both amendments to DC's broader rental housing framework that moved through the Council together as part of the same omnibus act, which is a common legislative pattern in DC rather than a sign the two topics are related in practice. A property manager should treat these as two separate compliance questions, not as one combined change.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80]

7. The budget-contingency question, resolved

The act's own effective-date section, 701(a), makes a specific, narrow slice of the TOPA-related provisions contingent on funding being included in an approved budget and certified by the Chief Financial Officer. That contingent slice covers the tenant-support-provider term definition and certification process, within subsections (a) and (c) of section 301 of the act, the TOPA transparency-portal requirement in subsection (m), and a deed recordation tax amendment in section 302.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, § 701(a)]

The TOPA exemptions themselves, the roughly 20 categories described above, live in subsections (b) through (k) of section 301, amending section 42-3404.02b directly. Those subsections are not listed among the budget-contingent provisions in section 701(a). Along with the eviction-track changes, they took effect on the act's general effective date of December 31, 2025, without waiting on any future budget cycle.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80, § 701(a), § 301(b)-(k)]

For a housing provider or a buyer relying on one of the new TOPA exemptions today, that distinction matters directly: the exemption itself is already in force, even though a related piece of the same act, the certification infrastructure for tenant support providers, is not yet funded.

8. What this doesn't do

The faster eviction track doesn't apply to nonpayment cases, ordinary lease violations, or conduct that falls outside the specific dangerous-crime and crime-of-violence definitions. A tenant accused of a lease violation that doesn't rise to one of those defined categories is still subject to the standard 30-day notice and ordinary court timeline. And the TOPA exemptions don't repeal TOPA itself; they simply remove specific, defined categories of transfer from its scope. A sale that doesn't fit one of the roughly 20 listed categories still triggers the standard tenant right-of-first-refusal process.

[Cite: D.C. Law 26-80]

9. What property managers should do now

For the eviction provisions, the practical step is building a clear internal process for documenting qualifying conduct at the time it occurs, since the case will ultimately need to satisfy a court on the preponderance standard. That means contemporaneous incident reports, any available police reports, and witness statements, gathered promptly rather than reconstructed later. Legal counsel should confirm the alleged conduct actually fits within the defined dangerous-crime or crime-of-violence categories before filing under the shortened track, since using it for conduct that doesn't qualify risks the case being treated as an ordinary eviction with none of the expedited timeline's benefits.

For the TOPA side, a property owner considering a sale that might qualify for one of the new exemptions should confirm the specific category against the statutory text before assuming a transfer is exempt, particularly for the family-transfer and affordable-housing categories, where the exact relationship or covenant terms determine whether the exemption actually applies.