Mayor Fenty Announces More Aggressive Graffiti Abatement Plan

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty today announced plans for an aggressive government crackdown on graffiti. The Mayor will introduce emergency legislation this week to give the DC Department of Public Works (DPW) the ability to abate graffiti on private property more quickly – and to help property owners remove graffiti themselves.

“A community without graffiti is a safer, cleaner community,” said Mayor Fenty. “We’ve looked at other cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia that have comprehensive anti-graffiti programs and more rapid response times to incidents. We want to give property owners the chance to get it cleaned up faster by putting less of a burden on them to act.”
       
Under current law, DPW must obtain a waiver from the property owner to remove graffiti on private property. This can be a time-consuming process. Currently, half of the graffiti abatement requests to the Mayor’s Citywide Call Center are completed in 31 days or more. The Mayor’s proposal aims to reduce this time to 8 business days.

The Mayor’s legislation calls for the placement of a door tag on the property where graffiti has been reported. The door tag will inform a property owner of the reported graffiti and provide several options:

1. The property owner may consent to DPW removing the graffiti;
   
2. The property owner may agree to remove the graffiti and request a graffiti removal kit or paint voucher from DPW;
   
3. The property owner may decline to consent to DPW removing the graffiti and decline to remove the graffiti, which may lead to enforcement action;
   
4. The property owner may choose not to reply, in which case DPW will remove the graffiti.