Buildings

 

The Department of Buildings & Inspections Rolls Out New Program Changes!

In December 2023, City Council approved a series of Ordinances creating three new programs that our department will deliver.  The programs are Essential Services, Landlord Responsibility and Residential Rental Inspection (RRI) Expansion as described below:

Essential Services
Essential Services is a new property maintenance code enforcement program that will help reduce the number of evacuations of residential tenants due to unsafe conditions within residential rental properties. The program will allow us to remediate the failure of essential building facilities, such as heat, electrical, and fire safety exiting facilities, within residential rental buildings on an emergency basis. 

The department has at times experienced cases where a property owner has been ordered to correct “Essential Services” required to maintain the basic livability of one or more dwelling units in a building such as replacing nonfunctional furnaces in the winter, fixing collapsed sewer pipes prohibiting use of toilets and sinks, maintaining water pipes flow for drinking and sanitary purposes, replacing arcing and hazardous electrical panels, or ensuring that fire exits are secure and hazard free. When a property owner does not correct violations in a timely manner, the department may be caused to order tenants to vacate the building with minimal notification, disrupting their lives and often causing challenges for tenants both finding and affording alternative housing, and making it uncertain when or if they will return to their home. 

With this new Essential Services Program, when the department has ordered such hazardous or unlivable violations to be corrected, and the property owner has not caused corrections to occur in a reasonable and timely manner, and vacating the tenants is an imminent certainty, the Director will have discretion to authorize city approved contractors to proceed with immediately correcting the violations, alleviating the need for the tenants to be ordered to vacate. Upon completion of the work by the city, the department will seek reimbursement from the property owner for all associated costs incurred because of the department’s actions to remedy the situation. The department will bill for these expenses, and has authority to forward the expenses to collection, to assess the costs of the property tax bill for repayment, or to potentially foreclose on property for lack of payment.
 
This process is similar to protocols the department currently utilizes to enforce the Hazard Abatement Program, Barricade Program, and Private Lot Abatement Program (PLAP). 

Landlord Responsibility 
The new Landlord Responsibility legislation establishes a procedure by which tenants may receive relocation assistance if ordered by the City to vacate their residences due to unsanitary living conditions that are either created, or knowingly and willfully left unabated by the property owner. For example, exposure to lead dust and paint chips is detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of tenants, and, especially in the case of children, may result in lead poisoning and cause significant negative effects on a child's health and psychological development. The Cincinnati Health Department (CHD) is occasionally required to issue a Notice of Noncompliance and Order to Vacate residential properties due to the existence of lead hazards that make properties unsafe for human occupation, and the failure to abate is due to the property owner’s failure to cooperate with the City's lead hazard abatement enforcement efforts. Additionally, during cold weather months, CHD and B&I are regularly alerted to rental properties where there is insufficient heat and are required to issue orders requiring the vacation of these properties to protect the health and safety of their occupants.

Vacate orders are issued by the City as a last resort, when necessary, where living conditions become unsafe, and only reasonable attempts to attain compliance have been exhausted. The expenses incurred in moving and the difficulty of finding affordable replacement housing create a financial hardship on tenants, especially low-income tenants. The City currently provides minimal tenant relocation assistance out of goodwill, not as a legal requirement, to help tenants who are forced to vacate their rental units due to substandard living conditions to obtain safe and sanitary housing.

Property owners who fail to provide safe and sanitary housing, consistent with the obligations under Chapter 5321 of the Ohio Revised Code, should bear responsibility for the costs incurred by the City in providing relocation assistance to displaced tenants.  This is needed to supplement existing state and common law remedies that are insufficient to address the problems facing tenants and the City when a rental property is deemed uninhabitable by the City's code enforcement team.

Residential Rental Inspection (RRI) Expansion 
The Residential Rental Property Inspection Pilot Program is now permanent and expands its geographic area. The pilot program demonstrated that additional oversight of wayward housing providers through routine and ongoing inspection motivates and incentivizes the correction of code violations and the continued maintenance required to prevent deterioration of housing stock. To increase the protection of public health, safety, and welfare against the harm of neglected deteriorating housing, the scope of the program will expand from three neighborhoods to seven neighborhoods. To the original three pilot neighborhoods of Clifton-University Heights Fairview (CUF), Avondale, and East Price Hill, will be added the four neighborhoods of West Price Hill, Westwood, College Hill, and Madisonville. These neighborhoods were selected due to the higher number of rental properties, aged housing stock, and the volume of code violations. 

In addition to expanding the geographic scope of the eligible properties, the new program provides a feature for better addressing poorly operating housing providers. Namely, if a housing provider owns a property within any of the identified neighborhoods that falls into disrepair and otherwise becomes eligible for the rental inspection program, the eligibility will trigger a review of the owner’s entire portfolio located anywhere within the corporate limits of Cincinnati. Any properties owned by the same owner will be reviewed to determine if there has been a pattern of neglect. Those eligible properties will enter the RRI Program and receive additional attention until fully code compliant. The same eligibility criteria such as history of non-compliance will be used to determine eligibility of properties both in the focus neighborhoods, and when triggered by ownership throughout the City.