Residents of the Dorchester House apartments on 16th St NW received a memo last week from John Hoskinson, president of the building’s management company, asking “tenants with special expertise in…accounting, architecture, law, construction trades, engineering, income taxation, construction management, and budget analysis to give a small amount of uncompensated time.” While the memo left the impression that Hoskinson was assembling his own white-collar tenant workforce, he insists he was only trying to get advice on capital improvements. Campbell Johnson, president of Dorchester’s tenants’ association, doesn’t expect many of the building’s residents—who in recent months have grappled with mouse and cockroach infestations and phantom air-conditioning charges in the middle of winter—to lend a hand. “Doing those things is [management’s] job,” Johnson says. “That’s what you do when you manage a building.” But Moni Jeffries, the building’s on-site manager, says a few altruistic residents have already volunteered. “They’re just interested in making the building better,” she says.

—Jeff Horwitz