Opinion ID: 2422541
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: applicability of topa to all sales

Text: Finally, we address the owners' broadest argument, raised for the first time on appeal, that a seller's obligations under TOPA arise only if the sale of an accommodation is for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. This issue, as we have noted, is one of first impression. We begin by quoting in its entirety the TOPA provision upon which the owners base this contention: Before an owner of a housing accommodation may sell the accommodation, or issue a notice of intent to recover possession, or notice to vacate, for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, the owner shall give the tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale. D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(a) (2001) (emphasis added). Primarily on the basis of the placement of commas before and after the phrase that we have italicized, the owners contend that the transactions in these cases were not subject to TOPA because even if the transfers were sales, they were not for the purpose of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. They contend that the punctuation in the provision compels the conclusion that TOPA was not violated. The owners further argue that their proposed construction of the statute is consistent with its stated purposes of discourag[ing] the displacement of tenants through conversion or sale of rental properties and to preserve rental housing which can be afforded by lower income tenants. They claim that the transfers in these cases were ultimately from one landlord to another, that each rental unit was maintained as a rental unit, and that the transactions therefore did not impede or interfere with the statutory purposes. The owners also assert that if TOPA is construed as applying to sales which are not for the purpose of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, and which therefore do not adversely affect the availability of affordable rental housing, then the statute runs afoul of U.S. Const. art. 1, § 10, cl. 1 (No state shall . . . pass any. . . Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts) and effects an unconstitutional redistribution of wealth. [17] So far as we can determine, the owners did not raise their claim that TOPA is limited to demolition/discontinuation scenarios in any of the cases before the Superior Court, and the issue is presented for the first time on appeal. This court may affirm a judgment, however, upon any legally sound ground, provided that there has been no procedural unfairness and that the opposing party has been afforded an adequate opportunity to contest the issue on which the appellate ruling is based. 1137 19th St. Assocs., Ltd. P'ship v. District of Columbia, 769 A.2d 155, 161 (D.C.2001); Sheetz v. District of Columbia, 629 A.2d 515, 519 n. 5 (D.C.1993). Following oral argument in the appeals now before us, the court requested the parties, and invited potential amici curiae, to file supplemental briefs addressing the owners' claim described above. Both parties have now had the opportunity to brief the issue, and we therefore believe that it is appropriate for us to decide [it]. Martin v. United States, 952 A.2d 181, 189 (D.C. 2008); see also Outlaw v. United States, 632 A.2d 408, 410 & n. 7 (D.C.1993). The question before us is one of statutory construction, i.e., one of law, and our review is therefore de novo. Wemhoff v. District of Columbia, 887 A.2d 1004, 1007 (D.C.2005). [18] We note at the outset that the only court that has passed on the issue directly has rejected the narrow interpretation of TOPA here proposed by the owners, namely, that the only sales subject to TOPA are those for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. See Redmond, 797 F.Supp. at 37-38. [19] Further, this court has repeatedly stated, without ever mentioning any demolition/discontinuance limitation, that before the owner may sell a housing accommodation, it must give the tenant (or tenants) notice and an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and on terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale. Twin Towers, 894 A.2d at 1115; accord, e.g., Alcazar, 981 A.2d at 1206; Gomez, 967 A.2d at 1282; 1836 S St. Tenants Ass'n v. Estate of Battle, 965 A.2d 832, 838, 840 (D.C.2009); see also West End Tenants, 640 A.2d at 721-32 (deciding the question whether a master lease constituted a sale, and implicitly assuming for that purpose that all sales were subject to TOPA). Nevertheless, this court has never had occasion to consider the issue whether the reach of TOPA is limited in the manner that the owners suggest. Questions which merely lurk in the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents. Webster v. Fall, 266 U.S. 507, 511, 45 S.Ct. 148, 69 L.Ed. 411 (1925); Murphy v. McCloud, 650 A.2d 202, 205 (D.C.1994) (quoting Webster ). [T]he rule of stare decisis is never properly invoked unless in the decision put forward as precedent the judicial mind has been applied to and passed upon the precise question. District of Columbia v. Sierra Club, 670 A.2d 354, 360 (D.C.1996) (quoting Murphy, 650 A.2d at 205).
We start, as we must, with the language of the statute. Bailey v. United States, 516 U.S. 137, 144, 116 S.Ct. 501, 133 L.Ed.2d 472 (1995). As our en banc court has stated, [t]he primary and general rule of statutory construction is that the intent of the lawmaker is to be found in the language that he has used. Peoples Drug Stores, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 470 A.2d 751, 753 (D.C.1983) (en banc) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). However, as Judge Learned Hand has written, it is one of the surest indexes of a mature and developed jurisprudence not to make a fortress out of the dictionary. Cabell v. Markham, 148 F.2d 737, 739 (2d Cir.), aff'd, 326 U.S. 404, 66 S.Ct. 193, 90 L.Ed. 165 (1945); see also James Parreco & Son v. District of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n, 567 A.2d 43, 45 (D.C.1989) (quoting Cabell ). Accordingly, we must be mindful that our interpretation is not at variance with the policy of the legislation as a whole, requiring that we remain more faithful to the purpose than the word. Jeffrey v. United States, 892 A.2d 1122, 1128 (D.C.2006) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The text of the provision here at issue is reproduced on page 33, ante. The sole ambiguity, if there is one, is whether the phrase for demolition or discontinuance of housing use, which is set off by commas, modifies the words sell the accommodation, as well as one or both of the other two kinds of transactions to which the statute refers. The owners assert that the commas before and after the key phrase demonstrate beyond doubt that the limiting language applies to the sale of an accommodation. For the reasons set forth below, however, we conclude that the punctuation is not dispositive, that the owners' proposed construction essentially nullifies the words sell the accommodation and leads to irrational results, and that the overall historical context, as well as the specific history of TOPA's enactment in 1980, conclusively demonstrate that the statute, read as a whole and in light of related provisions, is not limited to sales for the purpose of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. We are likewise unpersuaded by the owners' claim that if their construction of TOPA is rejected, the statute is unconstitutional.
As Justice Holmes has written, [u]pon this point, a page of history is worth a volume of logic. New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921). In order to resolve the question of statutory construction raised by the owners, and especially in order to understand the origins of the punctuation on which they principally rely, it is necessary to put the enactment of TOPA in 1980 into its historical context. In passing this legislation, the Council was not writing on a clean slate. Rather, TOPA was enacted against the backdrop of existing law, which required owners of certain rental housing accommodations to provide their tenants with an opportunity to purchase before the owners sold the property to third parties. In 1975, the Council began with the requirement that an owner of a single-family housing accommodation must provide the tenant with an opportunity to purchase before the owner would be permitted to sell the accommodation, regardless of the purpose of the sale. D.C. Law 1-33, § 301, D.C.Code § 45-1661 (Supp.IV, 1973-1977). In 1977, the Council significantly expanded the scope of this requirement. D.C. Law 2-54, §§ 601-602, D.C.Code § 45-1699.8, .9 (Supp.VI, 1978-79). It is undisputed and, indeed, indisputable, that prior to 1980, the law providing tenants with the opportunity to purchase was not restricted to sales for the purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. The enactment of TOPA in 1980 was not designed to curtail the rights of tenants. There is nothing to suggest that [when TOPA was enacted] the legislature intentionally changed the applicability of the statute, Redmond, 797 F.Supp. at 38, or intended in any way to restrict its scope. On the contrary, the purpose of the 1980 statute was to maintain and enhance the rights of tenants. Indeed, the Council explicitly recognized the need to do so. See, e.g., D.C. Law 3-86, §§ 101(a) (There is a continuing housing crisis in the District of Columbia.) & 101(b) (There is a severe shortage of rental housing available to the citizens of the District of Columbia.), D.C.Code § 42-3401(a)(1) & (2). The Council enacted the RHCSA, including TOPA, to discourage the displacement of tenants, to strengthen tenants' bargaining position, to preserve affordable rental housing, to encourage the formation of tenant organizations, and to serve several other purposes specified in the Act. See D.C. Law 3-86, § 102, D.C.Code § 42-3401.02. Since the owners cannot and do not claim that any demolition/discontinuance limitation of tenants' opportunity to purchase existed before 1980, their argument must necessarily rest on the theory that in enacting TOPA in that year, the Council intended to place on the rights of tenants a severe limitation that had not been in effect under prior law. Significantly, however, no such intention was disclosed by or mentioned in TOPA's legislative history, nor, indeed, so far as the record discloses, was such a purpose suggested by any proponent of TOPA before (or since) its enactment. In a case where the construction of legislative language such as this makes so sweeping and so relatively unorthodox a change as that made here, [we] think judges as well as detectives may take into consideration the fact that a watchdog did not bark in the night. INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 320 n. 44, 121 S.Ct. 2271, 150 L.Ed.2d 347 (2001) (quoting Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc., 446 U.S. 578, 602, 100 S.Ct. 1889, 64 L.Ed.2d 525 (1980) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting)); see also ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, Silver Blaze: The Complete Sherlock Holmes 335 (1927), cited in Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 396 n. 23, 111 S.Ct. 2354, 115 L.Ed.2d 348 (1991). A legislature does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions  it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes. Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'ns, 531 U.S. 457, 468, 121 S.Ct. 903, 149 L.Ed.2d 1 (2001). In Covington v. United States, 698 A.2d 1033 (D.C.1997), we observed that although [a] change in legislative language gives rise to the presumption that a change was intended in legislative result, it is unlikely that the Council would have enacted a major expansion of the availability of preventive detention in witness intimidation situations without any debate or explicit consideration whatever. Id. at 1036 n. 6 (citation omitted). This analysis obviously makes sense here; the Council would not severely curtail the rights of tenants without anyone so much as saying a word on the record about such a dramatic change. In this instance, as we shall see, there was no occasion for the dog to bark or for an elephant to be hidden, for no dramatic (or other) dilution of tenants' rights was being contemplated.
In this case, we think it appropriate to set forth TOPA's legislative history in some detail because, in our view, that history demonstrates beyond any doubt that the language and punctuation on which the owners rely was not intended to bring about the result which they ask us to reach. Indeed, this is one of the comparatively rare instances in which the legislative history conclusively demonstrates what the statutory language was designed to mean, and it specifically discloses how it came to pass that the commas are located where they now are. The story begins in 1979, when Bill 3-222, which was to become the RHCSA, was introduced in the Council. The initial version of the proposal set forth as follows the circumstances under which owners of housing accommodations would be required to afford tenants an opportunity to purchase: Sec. 402. Existence of Tenant Opportunity to Purchase. Before an owner of a housing accommodation may (a) sell the accommodation; (b) issue a notice of intent to recover possession for purposes of discontinuance of housing use or demolition; (c) issue a notice of intent to recover possession for purposes of conversion to condominium or cooperative form of ownership; or (d) issue a notice to vacate on account of sale, discontinuance of housing use, or demolition; the owner shall give the tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale. Bill 3-222, § 402 (Nov. 13, 1979), appended to D.C. Council, Comm. On Hous. & Econ. Dev., Report on Bill 3-222 (May 13, 1980) (Committee Report). In subsection (d), the bill thus proposed to add, for the first time, a requirement that the tenant be afforded an opportunity to purchase when the owner issued a notice of intent to recover possession or a notice to vacate for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. The text of the bill, as introduced, unambiguously provided, in sub-section (a), that a tenant's opportunity to purchase was to apply to sales of housing accommodations. The absence of any qualification or exception in sub-section (a) demonstrates, at least in the absence of a compelling contrary showing, that the proposed bill would apply to all sales. The new demolition/discontinuance language was, however, dropped from the Committee Print version of Bill 3-222, which provided quite simply: Sec. 402. Existence of tenant opportunity to purchase. Before an owner of a housing accommodation may sell the accommodation, the owner shall give the tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale. Bill 3-222, Comm. Print (May 13, 1980). This abbreviated text focused on the provision's central purpose  to ensure that before an owner may sell a housing accommodation, regardless of his or her reasons for doing so, the owner must give the tenant an opportunity to purchase. That central purpose was expressly confirmed in the Committee Report. [20] Neither the text nor the Report restricted in any way the sales which were to be covered. When Bill 3-222 came to the Council for its first reading, however, Councilmember John L. Ray introduced an amendment which would have reinserted the language of § 402 as originally introduced. Mr. Ray proposed that after the words may sell the accommodation, the Council insert in the Committee Print version of § 402 the words  or issue a notice of intent to recover possession or notice to vacate for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use.  (Emphasis added.) If this amendment had been adopted, § 402 would have read as follows: Sec. 402 Existence of tenant opportunity to purchase. Before an owner of a housing accommodation may sell the accommodation, or issue a notice of intent to recover possession or notice to vacate for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, the owner shall give the tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and terms which represent a bona fide offer of sale. (Language proposed by Mr. Ray emphasized.) Councilmember Ray explained his proposed amendment as follows: What this amendment does is to reestablish that principle [from the bill as first introduced] of allowing the tenants to not only purchase the building where the owner is putting the building up for sale, but also where the owner is planning on demolishing the building or discontinuing the use of the building as housing. (Emphasis added.) The text of the proposed amendment, as well as Mr. Ray's explanation, left no doubt that the phrase for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use did not restrict the words may sell the accommodation, and, indeed, that it was altogether unrelated to those words. Mr. Ray's proposed language, however, did not make it entirely clear whether the words for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use modified the words issue a notice of intent to recover possession, which were not the immediately preceding antecedent. Some members of the Council were concerned that the proposed amendment, as drafted, might be construed to require an owner to accord a tenant an opportunity to purchase even if the owner proposed to occupy the unit personally. D.C. Council, Legislative Session at 109-12 (June 3, 1980). Councilmember David Clarke insisted that the point needs to be clarified. I don't think we ever meant that if a guy wanted to take the unit or a single family house or whatever, to live in it that they [sic] had to offer it for sale to the tenants before they [sic] could move into it. Id. at 111. In order to resolve any perceived ambiguity, the Council's General Counsel suggested that putting some commas around `or notice to vacate' might make it clearer that the notice of intent to recover possession refers only to such notices issued for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. Id. at 111-12. Mr. Clarke proposed, as an alternative, that the Council simply strike the words a notice of intent to recover possession because the substance of that phrase was already included in the phrase or issue a notice to vacate. Id. at 112. Ultimately, however, he accepted the commas instead. Id. To implement Mr. Ray's proposal, while still accommodating the concerns of his colleagues that an owner should be permitted to occupy his or her own accommodation without first offering to sell it to the tenant, the words . . . or issue a notice of intent to recover possession, or notice to vacate, for purposes of demolition were inserted into the revised amendment. Id. at 113-14. As the General Counsel explained: [T]hen it would be clear that the notice of intent to recover possession also is for purposes of demolition. Id. at 114. This amendment, as modified, was adopted by the Council and became § 402 of the Act. It has remained unchanged ever since. Nowhere in the Council's consideration of the proposed legislation was there any suggestion that the language relating to demolition or discontinuance of housing use, or the commas proposed by the General Counsel, would affect the applicability of the statute to all sales. The drafting history thus establishes to our satisfaction that the phrasing and punctuation of D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(a) came about because the Council intended to make it clear that only notices of intent to recover possession for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use (and not notices of intent to recover possession for other purposes, such as occupancy by the owner) would trigger the tenant's opportunity to purchase. Thus, the words and the commas on which the owners rely were not placed where they are in order to limit in any way sales that would trigger tenants' rights. Indeed, no such dramatic restriction of coverage was proposed or mentioned by anybody.
The foregoing legislative history demonstrates beyond peradventure that the Council had no intention in 1980 of limiting tenants' rights to purchase when an owner sought to sell an accommodation. The owners, nevertheless, argue that because the emphasized phrase   for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use   is offset by commas, this limitation modifies each and every preceding clause, not just the [immediately] preceding clause. See, e.g., 2A NORMAN J. SINGER & J.D. SHAMBIE SINGER, Sutherland Statutory Construction, § 47.33, at 491-92 (2007) (Evidence that a qualifying phrase is supposed to apply to all antecedents instead of only to the preceding one may be found in the fact that it is separated from the antecedents by a comma); cf. Hargrove v. District of Columbia, 5 A.3d 632, 634 (D.C. 2010) (explaining the rule of the last antecedent). If the placement of this comma were the sole evidence of legislative intent, the owners' position might not be implausible, although as we show below, the statute as so construed would not be workable. But in this instance, in addition to the legislative history summarized above, which in this case is surely dispositive alone, there is also other compelling evidence that the Council did not intend the provision to mean what the owners claim that it means. The proper construction of a writing does not begin and end with the placement of a comma. A misplaced comma cannot be used to distort the meaning of a statute. 2A Sutherland, § 47.15, at 345. No more than isolated words or sentences is punctuation alone a reliable guide for discovery of a statute's meaning. United States Nat'l Bank of Oregon v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 455, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993). Indeed, as this case surely demonstrates, [a] purported plain meaning analysis based only on punctuation is necessarily incomplete and runs the risk of distorting the statute's true meaning. Id. at 454, 113 S.Ct. 2173. It has long been recognized in this jurisdiction that [p]unctuation is a most fallible standard by which to interpret a writing; it may be resorted to when all other means fail; but the court will first take the instrument by its four corners, in order to ascertain its true meaning. MacFarland v. Elverson, 32 U.S.App.D.C. 81, 87 (1908) (citation omitted). We turn to those four corners.
[S]tatutory meaning is to be derived, not from the reading of a single sentence or section, but from consideration of an entire enactment against the backdrop of its policies and objectives. Dorchester House Assocs. Ltd P'ship v. District of Columbia Rental Hous. Comm'n, 938 A.2d 696, 702 (D.C.2007) (citation omitted); see also Hargrove, 5 A.3d at 635 n. 11. A statute should be construed so that effect is given to all its provisions, so that no part will be inoperative or superfluous, void or insignificant. Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 101, 124 S.Ct. 2276, 159 L.Ed.2d 172 (2004) (quoting 2A NORMAN J. SINGER, STATUTES AND STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION § 46.06, at 181-86 (rev. 6th ed.2000)). In 1836 S Street Tenants Ass'n, 965 A.2d at 838, we applied this canon to the very statute at issue here, explaining that [w]e must, of course, read TOPA as a whole and resist any construction of its words [21] that would render part of the statute a nullity. In our view, the owners' construction of TOPA effectively renders inoperative the words sell the accommodation, which are among the most important words in the entire statute, if not the most important. The owners assert, as we have seen, that the placement of commas before and after the phrase for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use reflects a legislative judgment that TOPA shall apply to a sale only if the sale is for one of these purposes. Under the defendants' theory, TOPA's obligations therefore arise in three situations, namely, when an owner of a housing accommodation 1. sells the accommodation for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use; or 2. issues a notice of intent to recover possession for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use; or 3. issues a notice to vacate for purposes of demolition or housing use. It is undisputed that in all three of these situations, the tenants must be provided with notice of an opportunity to purchase at a fair price. But if the accommodation is a sale (as in situation No. 1), then it necessarily follows that before demolition of the accommodation or discontinuance of housing use can be carried out, the purchaser, as the party discontinuing rental use, will be obliged to provide the tenants with that notice and opportunity. In other words, if a sale to a third party is for the purpose of demolishing the premises or for discontinuing its use as housing, then that third party, i.e., the purchaser (as the party who proposes to demolish or discontinue) is responsible under the statute for providing a notice to the tenants and an opportunity to purchase, as specified therein. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how an owner could ever sell an accommodation for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, for it would be the buyer, and not the seller, who would have the ability to carry out the demolition or to discontinue the use of the accommodation as housing, and it would therefore be the buyer, and not the seller, who would have to provide notice and opportunity to purchase to the tenants if the buyer decided to adhere to that plan. A construction of the statute which imposes an obligation on the seller on the basis of actions that must necessarily be taken by the buyer is unreasonable. Further, it is difficult to discern what, if any, rational purpose would be served in such a situation by also requiring the seller to provide a notice and an opportunity to purchase when the buyer is the principal actor in the transaction affecting the tenants, and when the buyer must therefore give that notice and opportunity to them prior to demolishing the accommodation or discontinuing its use as housing. It is surely unreasonable to suggest that both the seller and the purchaser must provide the same notice and opportunity. Moreover, in many if not most cases, the seller may not be in a position to know whether or not the purchaser proposes to continue to use the premises as rental housing, and it makes no sense, in such a situation, to impose the obligation on the seller to inform the tenants of facts of which the seller is unaware. If the inclusion in the statute of the words sell an accommodation is to have any practical consequence, then those words must necessarily refer to a situation in which there will be no automatic obligation on the part of the buyer to provide notice and opportunity. That situation can arise only if the sale to the buyer is not for the purpose of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. Accordingly, as the Legal Aid Society states in its amicus brief, the term sell, as limited by appellees, has no function to perform: TOPA rights, on appellees' reading, depend entirely on the issuance of a notice to vacate/intent to recover possession for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. If that is what the Council intended, years of litigation over what constitutes a sale could have been avoided, and the Council could have saved itself the trouble of amending § 42-3404.02 several times to add and amend subsections (b) and (c) to clarify the meaning of sell and sale. Moreover, since 1980, the Council has repeatedly amended TOPA to expand the definition of a sale. Each of these amendments would have been a pointless frolic, to quote the Legal Aid Society's brief, if the only sales that triggered TOPA rights were those for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. See, e.g., D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(b) & (c), as adopted in and amended by D.C. Law 8-49 (1989); D.C. Law 10-144 (1994); D.C. Law 10-176 (1994); D.C. Law 11-31 (1995); D.C. Law 16-15 (2005). For example, in 1995, the Council added subsections (b) and (c), which, among other things, potentially treat a master lease as a sale which is subject to a tenant's opportunity to purchase. D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(b) & (c). That change would be of no consequence if the owners' construction were correct, for it is difficult to imagine how a master lease for a housing accommodation could ever be a sale for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. Further revisions were enacted in 2005 and 2008, see annotation to D.C.Code § 42-3404.02 (Supp.2010), and no mention is made in any of them of limiting the sales triggering the tenant's opportunity to purchase to those made for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. The repeated adoption of amendments and revisions which would have little or no effect under the owners' proposed construction confirms the lesson of the legislative history, namely, that such a construction was not intended and probably never crossed the Councilmembers' minds. Although the views of a subsequent [Council] form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one, United States v. Price, 361 U.S. 304, 313, 80 S.Ct. 326, 4 L.Ed.2d 334 (1960); but cf. Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 380-81 & n. 8, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969), it is implausible to suggest that the Council adopted all of these amendments while believing that only sales for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use were covered by TOPA. Further, the owners' interpretation would so diminish the significance of the terms sell and sale in the statutory scheme that it cannot be reconciled with the Council's careful attention to detail regarding what constitutes a sale, what an offer of sale must include and who must receive it, the obligation to bargain in good faith, the tenant's right to assign or sell his or her rights, procedures governing negotiations for housing accommodations of different sizes, requirements for the formation of tenant organizations to negotiate sales contracts for accommodations with five or more units, and a description of the timing of sales covered by the Act. All of these matters are addressed in the statute. See D.C.Code §§ 42-3404.02 to -3404.12. There would be no reasonable purpose for such an elaborate scheme if the Council had intended TOPA to provide tenants with an opportunity to purchase only when rental units are about to be demolished or discontinued as housing use  a relatively infrequent event. Indeed, it appears that of this court's many decisions construing TOPA that are cited in the briefs of the parties or amicus curiae, demolition or discontinuance of housing use was contemplated in only one. See 1618 Twenty-First St. Tenants' Ass'n v. The Phillips Collection, 829 A.2d 201 (D.C.2003).
When two statutes are capable of co-existence, it is the duty of the courts, absent a clearly expressed [legislative] intention to the contrary, to regard each as effective. DeGroot v. DeGroot, 939 A.2d 664, 670 (D.C.2008) (emphasis in original) (citation omitted). If related statutes conflict, we must reconcile them. Washington Teachers' Union, Local #6 v. District of Columbia Pub. Schs., 960 A.2d 1123, 1132 (D.C.2008) (citations omitted). The owners' proposed reading of D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(a), however, conflicts with other provisions of TOPA and related statutes. For example, the tenant's statutory right of first refusal is inconsistent with the owners' theory that a tenant's opportunity to purchase arises only if the sale is for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. In addition to any and all other rights specified in this subchapter, TOPA affords tenants the right of first refusal during the 15 days after the tenant or tenant organization has received from the owner a valid sales contract to purchase by a third party. Id. § 42-3404.08. The statutory right of first refusal contains no language limiting it to situations involving the proposed demolition or discontinuance of housing use. There is no reason for the scope of the right to receive a bona fide offer of sale to differ from the scope of the right of first refusal; indeed, to suggest such a difference would be incongruous. TOPA is structured in such a way that the right of first refusal and the right to an offer of sale function in tandem, and if one applies to all sales, so necessarily must the other. Section 42-3404.08, for example, provides that if the third-party contract is received during the negotiation periods pursuant to §§ 42-3404.09(2), § 42-3404.10(2), or § 42-3404.11(2)  which come into play only when the tenants have received an offer of sale  the 15-day period to exercise the right of first refusal will begin to run at the end of the negotiation period. See 1836 S St., Tenants Ass'n, 965 A.2d at 839-40 (describing the interplay between a tenant's right to receive a bona fide offer of sale and the right of first refusal). [22] Further, to construe § 42-3404.02(a) as requiring owners to afford their tenants an opportunity to purchase when they sell their units only if the sale is for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use creates a conflict with D.C.Code § 42-3505.01(e). That provision states that [a] housing provider may recover possession of a rental unit where the housing provider has in good faith contracted in writing to sell the rental unit or the housing accommodation in which the unit is located for the immediate and personal use and occupancy by another person, so long as the housing provider has notified the tenant in writing of the tenant's right and opportunity to purchase as provided in Chapter 34 of this title. Id. (emphasis added). This provision makes it clear that an owner who seeks to sell a unit for the immediate and personal use and occupancy of another person must first afford the tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation as provided in TOPA. However, the owner in this situation plainly would not be selling the unit for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use; indeed, continued housing use is the very purpose of the sale. Section 42-3505.01(e) can be given effect only if § 42-3404.02(a) is construed as requiring owners to provide tenants with an opportunity to purchase for all sales, not merely those for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use. See Washington Teachers' Union, 960 A.2d at 1132. Finally, the RHCSA provides that [t]he purposes of this chapter favor resolution of ambiguity by . . . a court toward the end of strengthening the legal rights of tenants or tenant organizations to the maximum extent permissible under law. D.C.Code § 42-3405.11. Even if we were to assume, arguendo, that the punctuation of § 42-3404.02(a) creates an ambiguity regarding whether TOPA rights extend to all sales or only to sales for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, and even if that ambiguity remained (which it does not) after TOPA's legislative history and the statute's interplay with related provisions are taken into account, we are required by the Act to resolve any such ambiguity in favor of the broader coverage, thereby advancing the legal rights of tenants and of organizations that represent them.
As we have noted above, the owners base their claim that TOPA requires notice to tenants only in demolition/discontinuance situations not merely on the punctuation of the relevant provision, but also on the purpose of the Act, which they describe as being the preservation of the availability of rental housing, especially for persons of low or moderate income. They argue that a sale of an apartment building by one landlord to another does not contravene that purpose if the building continues to be used as a rental accommodation, and is not converted into a condominium or a cooperative. But the RHCSA has several purposes, and the one on which the owners base their argument is not the only one. See D.C.Code § 42-3401.02. Although the prime goal of the legislation, [was] to avoid the erosion of affordable rental housing[,] Hornstein v. Barry, 560 A.2d 530, 534 & n. 6 (D.C.1989) (en banc); see D.C.Code § 42-3401.02(1), (2), (6), the Council has also made it an explicit purpose of the Act to strengthen the bargaining power of tenants and to encourage the formation of tenant organizations. Id. In addition, as we recently explained in Malik Corp. v. Tenacity Group, LLC, 961 A.2d 1057, 1062 (D.C.2008), the Council. . . enacted TOPA to discourage the displacement of tenants through the sale of rental properties and to provide tenants opportunities for home ownership, without interfering with a landlord's property rights. TOPA accords to the tenant not only the right to purchase the rental unit before the owner may sell it to a third party, D.C.Code § 42-3404.02(a), but also the right to assign his or her right. See id. § 42-3404.06. Tenants  the class whom TOPA was designed to protect  thus receive a significant and tangible benefit from the legislation. Allman, 888 A.2d at 1169. As a result of the statute's enactment, we concluded in Allman, tenants have something of value  assignable TOPA rights  for which a prospective assignee is likely to be willing to pay, and in many cases has paid, in order to acquire the property. Id. Enabling tenants to enjoy such benefits promotes the goals of creating home ownership for lower income tenants, preserving affordable rental housing, and minimizing displacement. D.C.Code § 42-3401.02(6a); see also id. § 42-3401.02(1). At the same time, it strengthen[s] the bargaining position of tenants, id. § 42-3401.02(1), and encourage[s] the formation of tenant organizations, id. § 42-3401.02(6), to take advantage of these benefits in multi-unit buildings. Affording tenants an opportunity to purchase serves these statutory purposes, even where, as here, the apartments are not converted into condominium units, and where Housing Provider A simply seeks to sell a building to Housing Provider B. We therefore cannot agree with the owners that their proposed restrictive construction of TOPA is consistent with, or vindicates, all (or even most) of that Act's remedial purposes.