31K Housing Violations Found During Montgomery's Inspection Surge

ROCKVILLE, MD — A two-year push to inspect 686 apartment buildings in Montgomery County resulted in more than 31,000 housing code violations, County Executive Marc Elrich said Thursday. The initiative, which concluded this week, is the "most aggressive among large jurisdictions in the Washington area," officials said. It also marks the first time Montgomery County has inspected so many apartment buildings in that time span.

Over the past two years, the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) inspected more than 22,000 units in 686 apartment buildings. The inspections yielded more than 31,000 housing code violations.

Because of how many violations were found, county inspectors put buildings into categories. They were either labeled "Complaint," "At-Risk," or "Troubled." Those on the "Troubled" list are multifamily rental properties with serious housing code violations — including rodent or insect infestation and mold — and are subject to annual inspections by the DHCA.

According to Elrich, 444 apartment buildings were found to be "Compliant," 112 were identified as "At-Risk," and 130 were classified as "Troubled."

Of the 31,000-plus housing code violations found in all the apartment buildings, 96 percent of them were corrected, Elrich said.

"This is a landmark achievement that we're announcing," Montgomery County Council member Tom Hucker said at a press conference on Thursday. "When you see these numbers, they're really thrilling."

A majority of apartment owners fixed the housing code violations before the first re-inspection. The others, however, were cited and fined by inspectors. According to officials, DHCA issued 309 citations during the two-year inspection initiative.

SEE ALSO:

• Crackdown On Housing Code Violations Targeted By Montgomery Co.
• Mold, Roaches, Rodents Prompt Massive Apartment Inspections

"We have heard rationalizations for years that mold and vermin and broken smoke detectors and housing and fire code violations were really rare in Montgomery County. Sometimes people said they were fabrications, where they were caused by the tenants themselves. And I think today's data shows that those skeptics were wrong and there have been widespread health and safety problems in Montgomery County housing for quite a long time," Hucker said Thursday.

The two-year initiative was a product of a tenant rights bill introduced by Elrich when he was a council member.

"Tenants deserve to live in safe housing conditions," said Elrich. "I have long worked on tenant issues and called for these more frequent and thorough inspections in my tenant rights legislation Bill 19-15, which the County Council unanimously supported. Over the past two years, our surge inspections enforced health and safety violations and identified the most problematic buildings. These surge inspections are a good start, and we will continue inspecting 'Troubled Properties' annually and intensively until each becomes compliant. This gives apartment building owners an incentive to maintain their building within code."