Is anybody really shocked that landlords try to convert apartment buildings to condos at the expense of tenants?

It's as if the Washington Post editors don't read their newspaper's coverage of these issues over the years, or the New York Times, with stories during the 1980s about how unscrupulous landlords would move in drug users and the like to "encourage" "normal" tenants to move out. Or the discussion in the book Streets of Hope about how arson was a specific strategy to rid property owners of "worthless" properties (also see the history of the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s, such as through the book, Report from Engine Company 82, a book I read when I was 12 or 13).

In short, the only thing that surprises me about these Post articles:

-- The Profit in Decay: Landlords Who Empty Buildings of Tenants Reap Extra Benefit Under Law
-- In One Heated Dispute, Someone Set a Fire: Unsolved Arson Followed Efforts to Move Tenants
-- A Failure in Enforcement

is how long they are.

Ain't no news in them though.

I worked some of those areas in Columbia Heights during the 2000 Census, and it was very clear what was happening. Buildings with beautiful views were being warehoused, the owners were waiting out tenants, to be able to renovate and resell.

And that the Government is oriented more to property owners than tenants... that's news?

See "DC Rent Administrator Leaves Position Amid Criticism" from the Washington Post in 2005 and this letter to the editor, "Crisis in Columbia Heights . . ." from 4/16/2000 (not online),
"Landlords Owe Sewer Bills; District to Close 'Unfit' Buildings; Owners Face Fines" from 3/14/2000; and "Condemnations Evict Hundreds" from 3/10/2000.