The Editor's Desk

It looks like I spent too much time thinking about what the Supreme Court might say about rental inspections and didn’t bother to look to see if lower courts had already addressed the matter.

They have. Attempts to implement rental inspections in Illinois and Texas have been successfully fought off as Fourth Amendment violations. The description of how the inspections bore out in Garland, Texas, is especially eye-opening. Those who voluntarily participated ended up having to deal with improvement demands that went far above and beyond the safety of the tenant. And of course, the landlords who were actually the cause of the problems didn’t even bother to register.

This rental inspection proposal is doomed. I know that a number of folks are planning to come forward to speak out against it. We can only hope the city listens before it brings an ordinance into play that will likely cost the city a lot of money when it’s inevitably challenged in court.

Incidentally, I rent my home, and I already warned a city staffer that I’m not going to agree to an inspection unless my landlord wants it.