Monday, December 12, 2005

Roch on RUCO

Roch Smith, Jr. has done some great investigative journalism over at Greensboro101.com on the way Greensboro's rental housing inspection program, RUCO*, is being administered.

Along with a number of other members of the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress, I spoke to the city council in favor of adopting RUCO because we thought it would improve the quality of low-income rental housing in Greensboro.

But Roch's article shows that city enforcement officers are inspecting apartments without the consent of the residents, and that's unconstituional.

*RUCO stands for "Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy," and the ordinance basically says that an apartment unit cannot be rented out unless the city has certified that it meets the city's minimum housing standard.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why the heck don't they just grandfather everyone that's currently in an apartment and require a CO whenever a new lease is signed?

Roch101 said...

That's an excellent question, David. It would be far simpler, they wouldn't have to worry about an occupant's consent at all, and they'd probably be able to inspect, if they wanted to, more than once every five years as the current statute allows.

David Wharton said...

Unfortunately, many landlords would probably fly under the radar successfully if the city didn't do a complete sweep.