Youngstown housing inspections encourage landlords to fix things

Youngstown housing inspections encourage landlords to fix things

It’s nice to know that the Youngstown cares about the safety of its residents.

I currently rent a three-floor house on the West Side. My house is one of over 4,000 units that the city would come to inspect for safety concerns, such as broken windows and missing smoke detectors. The inspection happened recently, and I am pleased with the results.

My home would not have passed the inspection earlier last month. Only one smoke detector was present on the first floor, which I am not sure even worked. Due to plumbing problems, a four-by- three foot section of ceiling in the kitchen was missing, exposing the pipes in question and the floorboards of the second floor. Carbon monoxide detectors were missing, and a handrail had come off the wall.

Most of the issues had been mentioned to the landlord at one time or another, but time and money constraints prevented them from getting fixed.

As soon as the inspection date was announced, my landlord took two days to fix the problems. As a result, the ceiling was fixed, and four smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide detector are present. Without the inspection, I feel it would have been awhile before the issues were remedied, if even at all.

Christopher Kochera, Youngstown