Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Pictured is a grassy area where sewage had leaked at the Toro Place Apartments in Houston.
After facing delays in 2025, a long-awaited ordinance to crack down on problematic apartment complexes in Houston is expected to receive a vote by the city council within the next 30 days.
The ordinance would create a registry of “high-risk rental buildings.” Apartment complexes that receive ten citations for health and safety issues within six months would be placed on the registry, and they would be subject to $250 to $2,000 daily fines for each unresolved violation.
According to Steven David, an executive within Mayor John Whitmire’s office, the city has already identified 12 properties it expects to list on the registry.
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In a presentation to the city council’s housing and economic development committees on Monday, David said, “We are creating a naughty list because we want to be able to move people and give them an extra special bear hug.”
“Our ordinances, at least in this avenue, are not meant to be punitive for the sake of being punitive,” he said. “We want compliance.”
In its early stages, David said the program will likely be limited to a dozen properties — a sliver of the 4,800 known apartment complexes in the city.
The program will face challenges as it expands, including a relatively small apartment inspection team that won’t immediately grow if the ordinance passes.
Chris Shannahan, an assistant director with Houston Public Works, said the department’s 12 field inspectors handle 1,200 scheduled inspections in addition to 3,300 to 3,600 311 complaints per year. Roger Sealy, assistant director with the Houston Health Department, said his department’s team of five inspectors has closed more than 12,000 cases over the past three years.
Most of the city’s complexes only receive inspections every four years, according to city officials. Under the ordinance, follow-up inspections for violations will happen within 30 days instead of 60 — with even shorter timespans for certain health violations.
“My concern is because we are such a big city, and we have so many apartment complexes, that we aren’t getting to those for four years,” said city council member Martha Castex-Tatum, who chairs the economic development committee. “So the people that are living there for that additional four years — they’re still dealing with the issue that had not been addressed.”
Over the first year of the program, David said, city officials will evaluate the need for additional inspectors.
Castex-Tatum and Tiffany Thomas, who chair the city council’s housing committee, led two community engagement meetings in February and March seeking input from tenants and landlords.
Among the issues raised in those meetings, Thomas highlighted tenants’ difficulty in getting mold addressed by city inspectors, their desire for pre-move-in inspections before a lease is signed, and a lack of communication between city inspectors and tenants.
“This is not a fix-all,” Thomas said. But, she added, “This is not a band-aid. … We’re talking about the worst of the worst.”
David said some of the feedback cannot be addressed by the city, like forcing problematic owners to sell properties.
The proposal was first crafted by former city council member Letitia Plummer, who stepped down to run for Harris County Judge. She faced pushback from the apartment industry last year, and the matter was tabled in December amid concerns about a lack of comprehensive community engagement. She did not immediately comment on the most recent proposal, which mirrors the rules she called for last year.
Staffers with the Houston Apartment Association and Texas Housers — advocacy groups for landlords and tenants, respectively — expressed support for the recent engagement process during public comment on Monday.
Castex-Tatum said the ordinance will come to the full city council for a vote “probably within the next 30 days.”