City of Houston housing guru and Friend of Bill David Mincberg has really been making the (news) rounds lately. Here’s a dispatch from the Chronicle‘s Seshadri Kumar:
The city of Houston will soon have an ordinance on the habitability of apartments to ensure that rental units are fit for people to live in.
David Mincberg, special assistant to the Mayor for Multi-Family Housing, announced the new ordinance Tuesday at a business and community leaders breakfast meeting hosted by Southwest Houston 2000 Inc. and the Brays Oaks Management District.
The proposed ordinance would state that apartments should not be overrun by trash or be infested with rats; should have no leaky roofs; area streets should not have potholes; and the complex should have proper plumbing, electrical and mechanical fittings, Mincberg said.
Every apartment unit in the city would be inspected every three years by the Houston Fire Department. An inspection fee charged apartment owners will help fund the program, he said.
Currently, once an apartment complex receives an occupation certificate from the city, there are no further inspections — even if the apartment complex is 20 or 30 years old, Mincberg said.
The ordinance is being written and will be sent to City Council in a couple of months, he said.
A couple of points about the bolded portions: 1) Area streets should certainly not have potholes — while the ordinance presumably will focus on streets within apartment communities, we’re all for fixing potholes citywide. Strangely enough, it just seems like something the city should be doing. 2) What are the odds the inspection fee charged apartment owners will, in actuality, fund the spending priorities of the Mayor and his Council, and the Houston Fire Department won’t really see much budget expansion despite the expansion of its duties?
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