WASHINGTON (DC News Now) -- The owners of a Northwest D.C. apartment building have to pay $1.65 million to 53 tenants and the District. It comes after the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) reached a settlement with the owners of Foster House in Shaw. OAG said the building owners "severely neglected repair and maintenance of the building and endangered tenants, including many low-income seniors who had lived in the building for decades." New pandas at Smithsonian National Zoo adjusting to their new home Former Foster House Apartments tenants said the building has gone downhill over the past decade. "We had rats, we had roaches, we had bugs. We had water in the walls, windows blowing out," said Elizabeth Johnson, a former tenant for 11 years. The problems got so bad that the Office of the Attorney General ordered owners New Bethel Baptist Church Housing Corporation Inc. and its business partner, Evergreen 801 RI Apartments LLC, to make repairs in 2021. But OAG said they failed to do so. "My apartment was supposed to be remediated from the mold and all these things. Oh, no. Rats were coming in my unit through the cabinets," said Ericka Malloy, president of the Foster House Tenants' Association. Malloy, who lived there for 17 years, is now among 53 tenants who will get $650,000 in restitution. The settlement with the A.G.'s Office also requires owners to pay the District $1 million in civil penalties. "I'm hoping that it will send the message to like, you know, don't abandon your tenants," Malloy said. "And just because they live in affordable housing doesn't mean that they have to be treated like that." Johnson, who's still getting her new apartment set up, has a simple message for other landlords. "Don't be a slumlord. Keep your property up," Johnson said. DMV residents with ties to Lebanon share concerns as fighting intensifies between Israel, Hezbollah Pastor Dexter Nuttall, president of the New Bethel Baptist Church Housing Corporation, wouldn't comment on specifics of the problems mentioned but says he's excited to partner with a new buyer. "It remains to be seen what the actual project is, that it will be. But our intent and our desire and our mission and our focus is to say, is to serve the same people, who have called us slumlords," Nutall said. Nutall said he's focused on the affordable housing crisis. "The reality is that a lot of what it is that could have been possible has been challenged because the resources that might have been used for affordable housing have been used to try to defend ourselves," Nutall said. Under the agreement, the owners have one year to sell the property to a buyer who will agree to develop and maintain at least 76 affordable apartments and keep them affordable for 30 years.