Detroit council tightens rental, inspection regulations

[Vic01]

"The Detroit City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to update its rental regulations, including enacting rules that stop landlords from collecting rent if they haven’t passed city inspections.
Under current law, housing units are supposed to be registered and have passed city inspections by obtaining a certificate of compliance before they can be rented out. But city officials admit they have let most landlords ignore the rules for more than a decade.
Supporters of the changes said they want to make sure all landlords comply with safety regulations, including lead poisoning prevention efforts. Lead inspections are a part of obtaining a certificate of compliance.
“We hope it will improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods and entire city,” said Councilman Andre Spivey, who sponsored the ordinance changes.
But some landlords have said enforcing inspections with the threat of rent being withheld will add to the challenges of doing business in the city, which include incidents of theft and destructive tenants. Some predicted the escrow provision would be challenged in court".
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...ons/107196580/

[Hermod]

Robert Heinlein noted in a novel many years ago that one of the problems in a democracy was that when voters vote for the impossible, the disastrous possible happens instead.

While there are many landlord abuses which occur in Detroit [[or in any locality), any tightening of the screws on landlords will lead to diminished availability of rentals and increased abandonment and destruction of property held for rental.

[Meddle]

If you can't maintain your places of business [[rental properties), you should not be in business.

[Bigdd]

If you can't maintain your places of business [[rental properties), you should not be in business.

Have you personally tired it with Detroit renters?

Very difficult.

The lead paint issue for example can cost 2-3x as much to deal with than what many landlords paid for their rental houses in Detroit [[in say 2010-2013). Just the testing is expensive,.. let alone re-doing the walls on the inside of the house.

Many renters also do a lot of damage to the property they are renting, especially Section 8 renters who are not financially responsible for the damage they cause.

Most renters also do not have good credit scores,... so there is little the landlord has to hold over them. [[This is what causes renters to be on good behavior in more affluent cities).

Landlords in Detroit can usually only make it work if they get the property really cheap,.. and do minimal maintenance. Otherwise they have to walk away or not purchase the properties in the first place.

I can see this causing a huge increase in the abandonment / tear-down problem in Detroit.

City inspection dept is also understaffed and poorly organized. They'll often tell you one thing one year,.. and an entirely different thing the next. Causing you to be unprepared the next year and fail.

When you get an inspection,.. the inspectors NEVER give you anything that says you passed. If you have violations,.. they are supposed to send you a list of them, [[with the codes so that you can look up the rule and see what is needed to be compliant). 1/4 of the time they don't send you the notice,.. and most of the time the codes are missing). So you think you passed,.. but then you find out 6 months later one of your inspections failed,.. and you can't get your clearance.

With businesses,.. it is near impossible to have licenses continuously. It often takes 9 months to 1.5 years to complete the inspection cycle. So you start 3-4 months before your license is due,.. yet even if you have no violations,.. there might be a 1-14 month gap where your license / Cert of Compliance is expired.

So the landlord would not be able to collect rent 1/2 the time,.. even if they were compliant.

The landlord / business owner of course has no authority over the city inspector. So there is no way to hurry them along. Call for a re-inspection? It might be 6 months before they get back to you. Complete the inspection? The inspector might never call in your compliance to the license department. You might have to call them 2-3x a week for 6 months to get them to send it in.

-City Council needs to add to the bill that re-inspections need to be done within 3-4 days of the landlord calling for them.

-Compliances need to be sent in the afternoon of the inspection / re-inspection.

-Inspector need to issue the list of violations [[if there are any) within 2-3 days of the inspection.

In my experience,.. less than 1 day a year is spent becoming compliant,.. and perhaps 100 hours is spent chasing down inspectors,.. trying to get them to do their job.

[Wesley Mouch]

Have you personally tired it with Detroit renters?

Very difficult.

The lead paint issue for example can cost 2-3x as much to deal with than what many landlords paid for their rental houses in Detroit [[in say 2010-2013). Just the testing is expensive,.. let alone re-doing the walls on the inside of the house.

Many renters also do a lot of damage to the property they are renting, especially Section 8 renters who are not financially responsible for the damage they cause.

Most renters also do not have good credit scores,... so there is little the landlord has to hold over them. [[This is what causes renters to be on good behavior in more affluent cities).

Landlords in Detroit can usually only make it work if they get the property really cheap,.. and do minimal maintenance. Otherwise they have to walk away or not purchase the properties in the first place.

I can see this causing a huge increase in the abandonment / tear-down problem in Detroit.

City inspection dept is also understaffed and poorly organized. They'll often tell you one thing one year,.. and an entirely different thing the next. Causing you to be unprepared the next year and fail.

When you get an inspection,.. the inspectors NEVER give you anything that says you passed. If you have violations,.. they are supposed to send you a list of them, [[with the codes so that you can look up the rule and see what is needed to be compliant). 1/4 of the time they don't send you the notice,.. and most of the time the codes are missing). So you think you passed,.. but then you find out 6 months later one of your inspections failed,.. and you can't get your clearance.

With businesses,.. it is near impossible to have licenses continuously. It often takes 9 months to 1.5 years to complete the inspection cycle. So you start 3-4 months before your license is due,.. yet even if you have no violations,.. there might be a 1-14 month gap where your license / Cert of Compliance is expired.

So the landlord would not be able to collect rent 1/2 the time,.. even if they were compliant.

The landlord / business owner of course has no authority over the city inspector. So there is no way to hurry them along. Call for a re-inspection? It might be 6 months before they get back to you. Complete the inspection? The inspector might never call in your compliance to the license department. You might have to call them 2-3x a week for 6 months to get them to send it in.

-City Council needs to add to the bill that re-inspections need to be done within 3-4 days of the landlord calling for them.

-Compliances need to be sent in the afternoon of the inspection / re-inspection.

-Inspector need to issue the list of violations [[if there are any) within 2-3 days of the inspection.

In my experience,.. less than 1 day a year is spent becoming compliant,.. and perhaps 100 hours is spent chasing down inspectors,.. trying to get them to do their job.

This is pretty much my experience in commercial properties as well. Its been 5 years since I dealt with CoD inspectors, and I'd hoped it had improved.

If you want to test the system, just try calling into inspections and get to a real human being. It used to be impossible without spending about 2 hours repeatedly calling.

I'm all in favor of safe homes & buildings. CoD B&SE wasn't capable of helping with the process, and was probably more of a hindrance to compliance.

[ekleezy]

From my experience as a tenant dealing with a landlord who wouldn't make repairs, calling into inspections and getting to a real human being was really easy. I called and made an appointment for an inspector to come out several days later. Maybe harder for some reason to get an inspector to come out if you're a landlord?

I've also lived in a building that was almost evacuated by the city because the owner failed to come up to code or get licenses after almost a decade of being warned. 6 months later, rent has increased $100/month/apartment and minimal changes have been made. Seems like building requirements aren't being met as a result of greed, not lack of ability.

[Wesley Mouch]

From my experience as a tenant dealing with a landlord who wouldn't make repairs, calling into inspections and getting to a real human being was really easy. I called and made an appointment for an inspector to come out several days later. Maybe harder for some reason to get an inspector to come out if you're a landlord?

I've also lived in a building that was almost evacuated by the city because the owner failed to come up to code or get licenses after almost a decade of being warned. 6 months later, rent has increased $100/month/apartment and minimal changes have been made. Seems like building requirements aren't being met as a result of greed, not lack of ability.

I'm glad to hear that they've improved.

In your anecdotal story, I assume the landlord fixed the problems. Code Officials don't concern themselves much with history. As long as deficiencies are remediated, doesn't matter how long they were out of compliance.

So I don't see how you get greed out of that story. There were problems. Inspections. Then threats to "almost evacuate". And since they are still operating, there must have been repairs. Then the landlord recovered the improvements via presumably legal rent increases. What's the problem? How do you see greed here. I see the system working fine.

[Bigdd]

I've had years where all the requirements were met, and the head of the department still wouldn't issue a Cert of Compliance. He simply didn't want to. And there's nothing in the codes saying they HAVE to do their job. No paychecks withheld, no firings, no prison time.

I had a fire inspector one year refuse to turn in the compliance to Business License after we passed our inspection with flying colors. It took me a year and a half to get his supervisor to do it. Next thing I know the guy has gotten promoted. By the time I got that Cert,.. it was expired. No refund of course.

So a law like this takes some en-elected city desk-sitter and turns them into a Tzar, with the power to put anyone they want out of business.

Scary. Perhaps time for the rest of us to leave Detroit?

[Wesley Mouch]

I've had years where all the requirements were met, and the head of the department still wouldn't issue a Cert of Compliance. He simply didn't want to. And there's nothing in the codes saying they HAVE to do their job. No paychecks withheld, no firings, no prison time.

I had a fire inspector one year refuse to turn in the compliance to Business License after we passed our inspection with flying colors. It took me a year and a half to get his supervisor to do it. Next thing I know the guy has gotten promoted. By the time I got that Cert,.. it was expired. No refund of course.

So a law like this takes some en-elected city desk-sitter and turns them into a Tzar, with the power to put anyone they want out of business.

Scary. Perhaps time for the rest of us to leave Detroit?

This is one of those tough problems for Detroit. You certainly want safe buildings. But you also want affordability. Complex and expensive requirements for landlords work against affordability.

And may I also say that they are a form of required gentrification? Only big organizations can often afford to understand and reach full compliance. Mom & Pop are often priced out of the game when you have to have a Level 7 alarm system, and windows that meet LEED Level 42.

We should be careful that the code compliance dance isn't so complex that people try to hide and dodge.

All that said, the CoD seems to be behind on this. Last I dealt with them about 4 years ago, they were still using the same forms and procedures they probably used in 1940. To track your compliance is nearly impossible. Violations are not tracked by computer, but written by hand on small forms. Appointments are scheduled by hand. You have to get a dozen different departments to approve you before you can get a Cert of Compliance.

On the plus side, I have to say that over hundreds of inspections, I never felt that a bribe was even hinted at. Others have told me that they were hit up by inspectors, but I never was.