Opinion ID: 2258987
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Nature of the Voluntary Agreement

Text: The Rental Housing Act was enacted, in part, to protect tenants in the District of Columbia from potential economic abuses by their landlords, while at the same time enabling landlords to obtain a reasonable return on their investments. See D.C.Code § 45-2502 (1996). Relevant to the present case is section 45-2525(a) of the Act, quoted in part in note 2, supra, which authorizes landlords and tenants to enter into Voluntary Agreements of the sort at issue here. The Act further provides that, [i]f approved by the Rent Administrator, [a voluntary] agreement shall be binding on the [landlord] and on all tenants. D.C.Code § 45-2525(b). In this jurisdiction, leases of residential units are interpreted under general provisions of contract law rather than property law. See Javins v. First National Realty Corp., 138 U.S.App. D.C. 369, 373-375, 428 F.2d 1071, 1075-1077, cert. denied, 400 U.S. 925, 91 S.Ct. 186, 27 L.Ed.2d 185 (1970). Contract principles established in other areas of the law provide a more rational frame-work for the apportionment of landlord-tenant responsibilities. . . . Id. at 378, 428 F.2d at 1080. Thus it is beyond dispute that the leases between the landlords and the tenants in this case are to be treated as contracts, and that the rights of the parties are contractual rights. What we must decide here is whether the Voluntary Agreement had any effect on those rights, so that a remedy for a breach of the Voluntary Agreement may be devised by looking to the lease. We know of no case exactly like this one, but a close analogy may be found in Vicki Bagley Realty, Inc. v. Laufer, 482 A.2d 359 (D.C.1984). In that case a prospective purchaser of a house agreed, in the contract of sale, to rent the house for three months before actually buying it. A separate lease was drawn up for a three-month term, and the purchaser moved into the house. After two of the purchaser's checks bounced, however, the homeowners filed suit for possession, and the tenant/purchaser moved out soon thereafter. The homeowners then sued the two real estate agencies which had brokered the deal for breach of their fiduciary duties. Addressing the issue of damages, this court held that the sale contract and the three-month lease together constituted a single contract because each referred to specific provisions within the other. When a written agreement incorporates a second writing, the two documents must be read together as constituting the contract between the parties.. . . We must also read the two documents in a manner that gives a reasonable, lawful, and effective meaning to all their terms. Id. at 366 (citations omitted). We therefore held that a liquidated damages clause in the sale contract limited the damages available under the lease as well, which had no comparable provision. Although a Voluntary Agreement is a creature of statute and requires administrative approval before it may take effect, it is also a modification of an existing lease. In the case at bar, for example, the tenants' original leases provided for central heating and air conditioning, paid for by the Rittenhouse management. The Voluntary Agreement modified this lease provision by making the tenants themselves responsible for the costs of heating and cooling their apartments. Thus the two agreements must be read together as one because the second altered the mutual obligations of the parties as set forth in the first, and the second cannot be properly understood without reference to the first. The landlords' assertion that the Voluntary Agreement has an existence separate and apart from the leasehold relationship denies the very nature of a Voluntary Agreement as an alteration of the rights and duties of landlord and tenant under the lease. See D.C.Code § 45-2525. We hold, therefore, that Voluntary Agreements are not contracts separate from leases. Rather, once approved by the Rent Administrator, a Voluntary Agreement becomes an integral part of the now-modified lease, and the courts must read the two agreements together in a manner that gives a reasonable, lawful, and effective meaning to all their terms. Laufer, supra, 482 A.2d at 366; cf. North Lincoln Park Neighborhood Ass'n v. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, 666 A.2d 63, 66-67 (D.C.1995) (voluntary agreement which settled prior license renewal dispute became part of license, and breach of that agreement must be taken into account in future license renewal proceedings). Since a rent abatement is an accepted form of damages imposed upon a landlord for violating the terms of a lease, [3] we further hold that a rent abatement may also be awarded as damages for breach of a Voluntary Agreement.