A Columbia Heights property owner says squatters have occupied the basement unit of her three-family building in Washington, D.C. for eight months, running what she describes as a drug operation while she pays the property taxes and the city offers no path to get them out.
Tatyana Day Velasquez told Fox News Digital that strangers moved into the apartment after her prior tenant told her he had vacated. One man claimed the former tenant handed him a key. The lease bars unauthorized occupants, subletting and drug-related activity outright.
“I lived in several countries, including Third World countries, but it seems to me that I’m living in a Fourth World country in D.C. There’s no accountability for what goes on. Everybody just throws the ball to each other, and there’s no help.”
Photos and video Velasquez provided show needles, drug pipes, Narcan, fentanyl test strips, a machete and guns inside the unit. She says the occupants barricaded the entrance with trash cans and bricks and that the smell of chemicals now seeps through the building.
“They don’t pay rent,” Velasquez said. “I mean they’re making money by drug dealing, obviously.”
Three other tenants have since fled the building over safety concerns. Court records show one told Velasquez she “no longer feels safe enough to sleep here.”
Police Say Their Hands Are Tied
A June 26 Metropolitan Police Department report found that one occupant had “established residency” by living with a tenant already on the lease, meaning police could not remove him and instead classified the matter as a landlord-tenant dispute. No arrests were made.
Under D.C. law, property owners cannot remove occupants themselves. They must go through D.C. Superior Court, a process that can drag on for months. The city’s Office of the Tenant Advocate requires that occupants get a chance to contest an owner’s claims in court before any eviction proceeds.
A D.C. police spokesperson confirmed that MPD’s authority is limited once someone has established residency: officers can respond to calls, investigate crimes and arrest people when there is probable cause, but they cannot remove an established resident simply because an owner considers him unauthorized. Evictions go through D.C. Superior Court, with the U.S. Marshals carrying out court orders. The spokesperson said fixing the underlying law would require action by the D.C. Council. The mayor’s office declined to comment.
Velasquez calls the arrangement a violation of her constitutional rights.
“I believe this is predatory tactics, and I also believe that by letting squatters have rights, it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment because you no longer have private property. The government decides what your property is going to be used as.”
Meanwhile the bills keep arriving. Velasquez said she still owes D.C. property taxes and has faced trash violations tied to debris left by the occupants, despite collecting no rent from the unit.
Confronting Squatters Herself
With little response from police, Velasquez says she now drives to the building every day to confront the occupants directly. She says the confrontations have turned physical more than once.
“I’ve been assaulted like a couple of times and there’s nothing I can do because I’m responsible for the property and for the safety of other tenants.”
A neighbor identified as Lloyd said the situation contradicts the city’s stated priorities.
“You say you want to protect women. You’re so against domestic violence, you’re against this and that, but then you turn around and do something like this.”
Lloyd said the disruption has spread to neighbors just passing by the building, describing it as “an entitled domino effect” that turns a property into “a fungus in the neighborhood with nuclear waste attached to you.”
A Property-Rights Problem, Not a Housing Problem
John Gibbs, director of the Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that the core issue is legal, not economic.
“Squatting is not primarily a housing policy problem; it is a property-rights enforcement problem. The core failure is that lawful owners often face greater burdens recovering their property than unauthorized occupants face taking possession of it. The solution is restoring the presumption that ownership matters. Expedited removal procedures, stronger anti-fraud penalties, faster courts, and clearer authority for law enforcement could significantly reduce squatting while preserving protections for legitimate tenants.”
Gibbs pointed to COVID-era eviction moratoriums as a turning point, arguing they expanded government involvement in landlord-tenant disputes and normalized weighing occupancy rights against ownership rights. He also cited a broader reluctance among authorities to treat unauthorized occupancy as a property issue, weaker deterrence from policing and prosecution changes, and the spread of online tutorials and fake-lease schemes that make squatting easier to replicate.
Last week U.S. Marshals finally served an eviction at Velasquez’s property, and one occupant was arrested for violating a protective order tied to the location. But Velasquez says the problem has not gone away — the man and his associates have returned to the property multiple times since, and her protective order was dismissed because of clerical errors in the courts.
Velasquez says her case is one of many similar stories to hit D.C. property owners in recent years with no resolution.
“These small landlords cannot survive in D.C. I don’t know what the end game is from the city, but they don’t care about the small guys, the small landlords.”
Fox News Digital reached out to multiple D.C. City Council members and committees, as well as the alleged squatter, for comment; none responded.
