Housing Conditions In This Low-Income Neighborhood Pushed Tenants To Sue The Landlord

María Lara and her 10-year-old daughter, Ashley, live in Langley Park, Md., a densely populated, low-income suburb of Washington, D.C. She says the worst part about living in the Bedford and Victoria Station complex, a multifamily residential property, is that she and her daughter don't feel safe.

"These apartments are rotten," Lara says, because the place is "roach- and mice-infested, water leaks everywhere, [the] walls have holes and pipes are exposed." Her kitchen floors are buckling, and Lara can see down to her neighbor's first-floor apartment.

"I feel like the ceiling is going to collapse on us or we are going to fall on my neighbor below us," the 44-year-old native of El Salvador says.

Ashley worries about being bitten by bedbugs or rodents at night.

"Sometimes my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night when she hears rats and mice roaming