In the profanity-laced social media video, “The most f_____ up apartments in Houston Texas PT 22,” personality Rich Dame lambasts yet another raggedy apartment complex. This one has two towers of worn out mattresses by the dumpster, potholes that are at least the-sole-of-a-Timberland-boot deep and piles of abandoned furniture. For Houstonians, this short-form vertical video is as close as we can get to some sort of easily accessible record of which apartment properties they might want to avoid.
That’s not the case elsewhere.
Moving to Los Angeles? You’ll probably want to skip past a place at 636 1/2 North Hill Place. The apartments there were cited by the city 390 times over a roughly 12-year period. You’d probably want to skip 11700 West Wilshire Boulevard, too. 732 code violations. And you may want to keep driving past 6650 West Forest Lawn Drive. 1,916 citations. That’s according to a handy database compiled by the city’s controller using housing department data that tracks code violations, including infestations, broken windows, leaks and mold as well as tenants rights abuses in a separate category.
And Houston’s offender list? Well. Check back later.
This past spring, the city did pass a high-risk apartment ordinance similar to those on the books in other cities, including San Antonio. This new apartment program only promised to name a dozen or so of the worst of the worst. Now, we’re not New York or Los Angeles, but we are certainly bigger than San Antonio, which has more than 50 apartment complexes in its apartment inspection tracker, launched in 2023.
But even that is too much for City Hall it seems.
After the ordinance passed, a few council members shared on social media a list of 14 properties identified in the new high-risk program. But that was it. There was no public registry, no easily searchable database, not even a press release. It was a wasted opportunity. This ordinance represented a hard fought battle on behalf of tenants in Houston. Apartment owners deemed “high-risk” have to register with the city, but there isn’t, apparently, any public-facing version of that. Right now, renters basically have to rely on Google ratings or Dame’s social media videos.
What’s worse, we can’t even seem to get an update from City Hall about the progress of this new enforcement. Landlords always had to maintain standards of habitability but enforcement is weak. The ordinance was supposed to give the city some muscle. Championed by former City Council Member Letitia Plummer but passed after she left office, the measure calls for the reactivation of the city’s long dormant apartment inspection enforcement committee to help oversee its implementation. Now months later, it’s been mostly crickets from City Hall. The mayor’s office did not respond to our questions about whether they made any progress. Several council members also said they remain in the dark about the implementation. What gives?
Without follow-through, any ordinance is only as good as the paper it’s written on.
Rich Dame’s videos are alarming but silly — hardly an official source of information. Inside these complexes, though, too many Houston families are dealing with roach infestations so bad they have to bag their food in Ziploc bags or just eat outside in their car. With sewage leaks that pool in the property parking lot. With mold that the city admitted it doesn’t really have the capacity to inspect or address. More than half of Houston households rent, and yet renters are treated like an afterthought. It has taken years just to add a few inspectors to the city’s budget. Enforcement is a big task that a single ordinance won’t resolve but at the very least, we expected some increased transparency by now.
For now, Houston renters will just have to take their chances on rats, roaches, open sewage, broken outdoor staircases and other code violations.
Welcome to Houston. You’re on your own.