HOUSTON – The City of Houston is revamping its entire inspection process to better deal with the number of complaints regarding derelict residential and commercial properties.
Recently, the city combined inspectors from the Dept. of Neighborhoods and Public Works into one division; Community Code Enforcement.
Prior to this change, Dept. of Neighborhood inspectors handled code violations at residential properties, while Public Works handled commercial properties.
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“If you think about it in Houston, where we have no zoning, every single street has both residential and commercial properties on it,” said Public Works Dir. Randy Macchi. “We needed to make sure that we were combining our forces, using our resources wisely.”
A database of residential property inspections obtained by 2 Investigates shows 95,688 inspections were conducted by 33 inspectors since Jan 1, 2024. These inspections include everything from high weeds, to junked cars to abandoned buildings.
Macchi said he was still familiarizing himself with how Dept. of Neighborhood inspectors operate, but concedes the volume of complaints is a hurdle.
“There’s problems everywhere we go. We have residents who call 311 and they complain, and their complaint is, how come I call 3-1-1 and nothing happens? Well, a lot of it has to do with the amount of work there is to be done and how thin we are in terms of resources,” said Macchi.
Macchi said he is revamping the inspection process to ensure inspectors stay on top of violations until corrected, rather than spending the majority of time performing initial inspections. The city is also ramping up the hiring of code enforcement inspectors. Macchi said the goal is to have at least 100 inspectors working to address code violations.
Macchi said he will also be meeting with City of Houston municipal court judges to discuss whether city code needs to be revamped to help ensure violations are corrected.
“The types of enforcement we’re doing are intended to help drive down crime, beautify the area, it helps drive economic growth,” said Macchi.
2 Investigates also analyzed a municipal court database of citations issued by Dept. of Neighborhood and Public Works inspectors since Jan. 2023. The data shows 40-percent of DON citations were dismissed and 36-percent of HPW citations were dismissed.
According to the database, the top three reasons for dismissal is “Noelle Prosequi,” a legal term indicating the prosecution decided not to pursue the case, “Officer Not Present” and “Insufficient Evidence.”
Macchi said he is also reviewing whether inspectors may need more training when it comes to supporting their citations in court.
“We can send inspectors all day along, we can issue citations all day, but if nothing happens out of it, then it was a waste of those resources. That is the thing we’ve got to correct at this point,” said Macchi. “We’ve got to make sure that if we’re going to issue a citation someone can actually be held accountable.”