Review of Housing Inspections Ordered

Amid concern that the city is failing to carry out its promise of inspecting all apartments for a fee of $1 per month, the City Council on Wednesday ordered a review of the program as a first step toward an overhaul.

Councilman Mike Feuer said the fee was adopted six months ago to pay for a new program that would inspect every one of the city’s 750,000 apartment units at least once every three years, rather than the past practice of waiting for complaints before sending inspectors.

The idea was to take a comprehensive approach to reducing slum housing.

“We promised that units would get inspected on a regular basis,” Feuer told his colleagues. “Unfortunately, what has happened in practice breaks that promise and, worse, makes even less accessible the complaint-driven process we had before.”

Inspectors hired with the new fee have been spending much of their time responding to complaints, keeping them from the regular inspection program.

The council asked the city Housing Department to report on the cost, staffing needs and demand for responding to complaints, and where the fee revenue has been going.

Of 17,500 inspections done during the last six months of 1998, 13,000 were in response to complaints. At that rate, it would take 21 years to do regular inspections on all housing units.