Fairmont Gardens tenant is fighting eviction

Fairmont Gardens tenant Zahid Khan says he’s being evicted because he filed a complaint with Fairfax County about the unsanitary and unsafe conditions at the Annandale apartment complex.

He’s fighting the eviction in court.

Shortly after Khan moved in just over a year ago, he was disgusted by the constant stream of mice in his apartment. While the landlord, the Donaldson company, sent an exterminator, they failed to patch up holes in the walls where the rodents were getting in. 

“Every day there are three or four mice,” he says. 

When Khan saw a mouse sitting next to him on the couch while he was watching TV, he had enough. So he submitted a complaint to the Fairfax County Department of Code Compliance.

An employee in the Fairmont Gardens office later told him he shouldn’t have done that because “the manager will kick you out. They will find an excuse,” Khan recalled.

Meanwhile, every time he used the shower, water leaked into the apartment below. The lady who lives downstairs constantly knocked on Khan’s door to complain. The leak was eventually fixed.

Then, last spring, when that tenant got into an argument with Khan’s fiancé, the tenant complained to the police that the fiancé threatened her with a gun. “That was a lie,” he said. “There was no gun. The police didn’t arrest anyone.”

On July 31, Donaldson terminated Khan’s lease for “non-remediable breach of lease,” citing that incident. “That is why they are evicting us; it’s an excuse. It’s because I complained to the county.”

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Khan believes management “is afraid the county would shut down the place.” He says Donaldson doesn’t maintain the property because so many tenants are undocumented and don’t complain.

He says he’s always paid his rent on time, but because he didn’t renew his lease when it expired, he’s being charged an extra $350 a month for a month-to-month lease for a total of $2,300 for a one-bedroom apartment.

“Why should I renew when they’re going to evict me?” he says. He’s now in the process of finding an attorney to challenge the eviction in court. “I want to leave on my own terms. I don’t want to have an eviction on my record.”

“It’s a very trashy place,” says Khan, an officer with the Metro Special Police Department in D.C. “This place is very dangerous. It’s unsafe living here. It should be shut down.”

Rodent and cockroach infestations are just one of the problems Khan deals with at Fairmont Gardens.

There hasn’t been hot water in his building since Thanksgiving. People knock on his door all the time because the former tenant was a drug dealer.

He often sees people doing drugs, usually fentanyl, in the stairwell. Several months ago, a police SWAT unit arrested six or seven people for drugs in another building.

Two weeks ago, he heard gunshots, and he recently observed a police officer with a man lying on the grass experiencing an overdose.

In June, a 14-year-old was fatally shot at Fairmont Gardens and his companion was seriously injured. Two other teens were later arrested. The shooting happened close to Khan’s parking space.

Donaldson installed security cameras a few months ago, “but they don’t share the recordings with anyone,” he says.

A couple of months ago, Khan saw a man looking through the windows of his parked car. The man ran away when confronted.

He’s also heard reports about employees from the towing company contracted by Donaldson who were stealing items from residents’ cars.

“Management doesn’t care,” he said. “They know the undocumented won’t call the police.”