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5A Guide to Proactive Rental Inspection Programschangelabsolutions.org ADVANTAGES OF PROACTIVE RENTAL INSPECTION (PRI) PROGRAMS In many instances, PRI programs may be more effective than complaint-based programs in ensuring safe and healthy housing, preserving housing stock, protecting vulnerable tenants, and maintaining neighborhood property values. PRI Programs Preserve Safe and Healthy Rental Housing By relieving tenants of the burden of having to force reticent landlords to make needed repairs, systematic inspections can help ensure that a locality’s rental housing stock is maintained and that residents live in healthy conditions. Between the establishment of Los Angeles’s Systematic Code Enforcement Program (SCEP) in 1998 and 2005, “more than 90 percent of the city’s multifamily housing stock [was] inspected and more than one and half million habitability violations [were] corrected. The result [was] an estimated $1.3 billion re-investment by owners in the city’s existing housing stock.”13 For example, between 2008 and 2013, under Sacramento’s Rental Housing Inspection Program, housing and dangerous building cases were reduced by 22 percent.14 According to a study of PRI programs in five North Carolina cities, the City of Greensboro alone brought more than 8,700 rental properties up to minimum standards in four years under its proactive rental inspection program (RUCO).15 , 16, 17 In addition, by ensuring that landlords are aware of poor conditions before they worsen, systematic code enforcement encourages preventative maintenance, which is more cost effective than deferred maintenance, and thereby helps landlords to maintain their properties.18 PRI Programs Help Protect the Most Vulnerable Tenants Often, the most vulnerable tenants don’t complain.19, 20, 21, 22 Some tenants are unaware that they have a right to safe and habitable housing. They may not know about existing tenant protections or code enforcement programs. Or they may have language barriers or disabilities that make it difficult to navigate the code enforcement system. Many tenants may be afraid to complain about their housing for fear of increased rent or landlord retaliation (such as eviction). Residents may be undocumented or have limited income that hampers their ability to move. As a result of these barriers, the housing inhabited by the most vulnerable populations, which is frequently the worst housing, is often the most likely to fall through the cracks of a complaint-based code enforcement system. In 2009, Linda Argo, the Director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) for the District of Columbia, testified before the D.C. City Council about the need for their proactive rental inspection PRI BY ANY OTHER NAME… Proactive rental inspection (PRI) programs may go by any number of names. For example, they may be referred to as “systematic code enforcement,” “periodic code enforcement,” “rental housing inspection,” or “rental registration and licensing.” It is the regular, mandatory nature of inspections that differentiates these types of programs from complaint-based rental housing inspection programs. REDUCING COMPLAINT- BASED INSPECTIONS According to the author of a study examining North Carolina proactive rental inspection programs, “[t]he number of complaints a city receives about substandard housing is an important measure of program effectiveness. If inspections programs result in code compliance, a city should receive fewer complaints. Greensboro’s program began in 2004 . . . after a high of 1,427 housing complaints in 2005, the number of complaints fell by 61 percent to 871 in 2007.”10 In the city of Asheville (which was also included in the study), the number of complaints between 2001 and 2003 fell from 227 to 60.11 After the program was discontinued, the number of complaints increased again, reaching 189 in 2007.12