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The modest brick house at 703 Emerson St. NE has been in the Jones family since the Eisenhower administration.
Although Elsie Andrews left D.C. many years ago, she still remembers watching her parents, William and Sarah Jones, tramping up and down the narrow stairs of the two-story house. Her daughter, Tina Jones, recalls having sleepovers with her cousins on the screened-in front porch, waiting for her grandparents to call them in for breakfast the next morning. After William and Sarah passed away in the 1980s, Andrews inherited the house and has kept it in the family. At one point or another, Andrews’ sister, nieces, and even grandnieces have all called the house in North Michigan Park their home.
But even after all that history, Andrews is ready to move on and sell the house. She spent the past 30 years in Kentucky with her husband, Billie, but after he died she became eager to move back to the D.C. area to be closer to Jones and her grandchildren. A big move like that costs a lot of money, though, and at 77, Andrews just can’t get up and down the stairs the way she used to. “I don’t want to lose my momma’s house,” Andrews says, but this is for the best.
Tina found a buyer as soon as she put the house on the market. Who wouldn’t want to live in the lush, quiet neighborhood just a quick walk from the Fort Totten Metro station? Mayor Muriel Bowser herself grew up in a duplex a few blocks over.
Yet, for more than two years now, Andrews and her family have been stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, unable to sell the property. Thanks to a bizarre, uniquely D.C. set of circumstances involving probate records, she can’t prove that she has clear title to the property. And, according to several local attorneys, she’s not alone.
The problem stems from the probate process, in which a division of the D.C. Superior Court sorts through wills, inheritances, unpaid debts, and other financial issues when someone dies. Andrews thought she resolved all that messy business when her parents died, but their names remained on the title to the Emerson Street home for the past four decades. When she tried to remove them from the title so she could sell the house, the court said it needed to locate records of the previous probate proceedings to prove Andrews truly owned the property. That kicked off a Kafkaesque process to demonstrate what ought to be pretty evident: Andrews’ father died in 1981 and left the house to his daughter.
Court officials and local lawyers say this sort of problem happens with some frequency. Decades-old probate records are maintained by both the D.C. Archives and the National Archives and Records Administration, owing to the District’s past under full federal control. It can take the court months, and sometimes years, to track down these case files and get them to people who need them.
“I’m ready to get my picket sign and gather some friends and head down to Congress and yell, ‘Let my people go,’” says Andrews, no stranger to such demonstrations given her past as a union organizer when she was starting her career in D.C. “I just don’t know how to move the government.”
For a closer look at what’s going wrong with probate in the District, and how it’s threatening to push some families out of the city, check out our full story online.
—Alex Koma (tips? akoma@washingtoncitypaper.com)
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb partnered with his counterpart in Maryland, AG Anthony Brown, in a lawsuit against three gun dealers in Montgomery County. The suit alleges that Engage Armament, United Gun Shop, and Atlantic Guns repeatedly sold firearms to a straw purchaser, Demetrius Minor. The AGs allege that Minor purchased 34 firearms from the three stores in about six months and illegally transferred at least some of them to others; he has pleaded guilty to dealing firearms without a license in a separate criminal case. [Post, Informer]
D.C.’s pools and spray parks typically close after Labor Day. But Hearst Pool and Oxon Run Pool will remain open six days a week until Sept. 22, according to an announcement from Mayor Bowser. Several spray parks will also remain open every day from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. [NBC Washington]
D.C. has issued more than 147,000 tickets to drivers for illegally driving or parking in bus lanes. Each ticket comes with a $100 fine. [WUSA9]
By City Paper Staff (tips? editor@washingtoncitypaper.com)
D.C. regulators are (at last) going to start cracking down on cannabis “gifting” shops, in a bid to prop up the legal medical market. But the slow pace of enforcement from the Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis Administration has frustrated shop owners and lawmakers for months. “The mayor’s the only person who can make that happen,” says Council Chair Phil Mendelson. [Axios]
Prosecutors say they have Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White on tape threatening to block the confirmation of Kwelli Sneed, the interim head of the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, to help companies paying him hefty bribes. So who is Sneed? She’s held the interim job far longer than the law allows and is running a management consulting business on the side. [WJLA]
Several environmental groups are sounding the alarm about plans to renovate the Rock Creek Park Golf Course, as they involve the removal of more than 1,000 trees on the property. The National Park Service official overseeing the course called their claims that this will endanger the environment “not factual.” [WUSA9, WBJ]
By Alex Koma (tips? akoma@washingtoncitypaper.com)
Washingtonian’s Ike Allen chats with City Cast about the relative lack of international grocery stores in the D.C. area. [Washingtonian]
Useful content for parents and single cat (or dog) people alike: Consult this list of restaurants where kids eat free for family-friendly deals or as a reference for eateries to avoid while the deals are going on. [Axios]
By City Paper staff (tips? editor@washingtoncitypaper.com)
The Ghost With the Most Is Back and Still (Lovably) Vulgar
Practical effects and affection for the material help Tim Burton and his collaborators smooth over Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s shortcomings, including subplots stuck in purgatory.
Colombian curator José Roca will be the Hirshhorn’s inaugural curator of Latin American and Latin Diasporic Art. Roca, who spent a decade running a contemporary art space he cofounded in Bogota, will be responsible for bolstering the museum’s collections of 20th- and 21st-century art from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, but he will not be relocating to D.C. [Art Newspaper]
After a two-week run in January, playwright Sun Mee Chomet returns to D.C. for an encore performance of her solo show, How to Be a Korean Woman. Catch it again at Theater J, where it runs from Sept. 12 to 22. [DC Theater Arts]
By Sarah Marloff (tips? smarloff@washingtoncitypaper.com)
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