Photo by PoPville flickr user brunofish
“Dear PoPville,
Several years ago you had some posts about DCRA streamlining the process to get legal C of Os for basement apartments. They had a whole website and they seemed to imply that they were making the process easier. I recently started the C of O process for my own basement apartment and nothing is easy or streamlined at all. It seems like I’m going to need to pay an architect thousands of dollars to make drawings of my house, and that’s not even including any work I’ll have to do to bring the apartment up to code.
I wanted PoPville readers to know that in the case of legal basement apartments, it’s red tape as usual for DCRA. It seems like whatever DCRA did was merely a PR push and didn’t actually translate to an easier process for DC homeowners.”