When a landlord neglects a property, the city relies on citizens to submit a complaint to the code enforcement division. The target wait time for an inspector to visit high-priority complaints, which include issues like uninhabitable properties or unstable structures, is two days.
But the code enforcement division only meets that goal 29 percent of the time.
A recent audit found that those complaints often take 11 days for the city to respond to – that’s five times the targeted goal.
An earlier investigation found that San Diego’s code enforcement wasn’t doing all it could to help renters with complaints, so Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced he’d increase the division’s funding and create a special enforcement team for landlords with repeated complaints. But the audit, released last month, shows that the division is still not prioritizing complaints very well.
Voice of San Diego’s Andrew Keatts and NBC 7’s Monica Dean dig into some of the issues the code enforcement division has been having and how that affects the city. That’s this week’s San Diego Explained.