Cleveland to hire new inspectors to inspect 84,000 rental unit

[Bob Collett]

This is serious - http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2017/...

Cleveland, especially the west side of Cleveland represents a lot of great rental investment opportunities. There are lots of homes with "good bones" in great rental neighborhoods, especially in West Park and Longmead. For the most part, the home inspectors have been reasonable; doing their best to be fair. Not so much the courts, once a violation gets that far.

Now, things are about to change with Mayor Jackson's new Lead Paint initiative; which also includes more robust inspections of excessive use of extension cords, old hot water tanks, toilet inspections, sink inspections, smoke detector inspections, Flue inspections, self-closers on doors and more.

The plan also includes a new mandate forcing all landlords to register all rental properties with a late fee and misdemeanor conviction for failure to register.

Up until now, inspectors in the city of Cleveland stayed outside and simply required landlords to maintain the exteriors. Now apparently, the City will demand entry into every home, with the right to inspect every nook and cranny; will some will say represents unlawful search.

To make matters worse, the new charge creates unequal law such that only the landlord class will have their homes inspected. Owner occupants can have all the lead and leaky toilets they want.

While I certainly care about providing safe housing; I wonder who is going to be on hand to buy all of these unsafe houses as landlords begin to exit the market, and try to sell to  a shrinking base of qualified owner occupants? What will this do to values in a region that was hit hard by the last decade's housing crisis? 

Governments and, the courts, and the well meaning; seem to always fall victim to the law of unforeseen consequences that result from social engineering and regulatory overreach. Or is this a clever ploy to reduce the amount of actual housing stock to meet a population's need that has seen a net reduction in population during each of the last 5 decades?

I invite a rich conversation.