Buildings

Essential Services
In December 2023, City Council approved an Ordinance creating the Essential Services Program. 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).