City officials would crack down on landlords who don't have their rental properties up to code and reward those who do under a proposed ordinance announced Wednesday by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Councilmember Andre Spivey.
"While the city has historically had an ordinance requiring registration of rental properties, it hasn't been enforced in more than decade," Duggan explained at a news conference at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, citing a shortage of inspectors in Detroit's Building Safety Engineering Department (BSEED) as the problem.
Tens of thousands of rental properties in the city are not properly registered and have no certificate of compliance, according to city officials. The plan to get those properties up to code will involve letting landlords use authorized private companies for annual inspections, which city officials say will help clear a backlog of inspections and free up BSEED to do more enforcement.…