City of Fresno’s Rental Housing Registry Begins Inspections Today

The City of Fresno’s Rental Housing Registry begins its pro-active random inspection program today, the next step of the Rental Housing Improvement Act, an effort to improve the quality of rental housing in the city of Fresno.

While the City has conducted several volunteer inspections over the last few months, inspection notices for properties randomly selected through the Rental Registry were posted in multiple languages 14 days ago.  Hundreds of inspections have been noticed, and the City has automated the sampling of registered properties focusing predominantly on previous code violators.

Property Owners and/or Managers are responsible for notifying individual tenants and will be onsite for the City health and safety inspections.  All inspectors in the Rental Housing Division have received extensive training and certifications from the California Association of Code Enforcement Officers.

“The City team has worked hard to incorporate technology, train staff, and notify property owners about the program so that we can quickly and efficiently complete inspections.  Our goal is to be as non-obtrusive for tenants as possible, as we hit the ground running in the effort to improve Fresno’s housing stock,” said Kelli Furtado, Assistant Director of Development and Resource Management.  “However, we still need the public’s help in identifying any rental properties that have not yet registered. Our program works best when everyone is fully engaged and the Rental Registry is fully populated.”

The Rental Housing Registry, an easy-to-use website that property owners can use to register their rental units online, has been operational since the end of April and has over 46,000 units registered, well over half of the estimated 85,000-90,000 rental units in the city of Fresno.  The goal is to work with property owners to achieve compliance of health and safety code violations and improve the quality of Fresno’s rental housing stock.

The second round of notices is being mailed to all known property owners who have not yet registered their rental units for free.  Property owners will be given 18 days to comply or receive a fine that escalates for every 30 days the property is not registered.

To find the Rental Registry, or to search for the address of a property to determine if it has been registered, please visit www.fresno.gov/rentalhousing.