As other cities modernize their building inspection systems, Chicago remains locked into a complaint-based process that fails to consistently detect and address life-threatening safety issues.
A software update is expected to be wrapped up by 2025, according to a city spokesperson.
“There’s plenty of argument or discussion to be had about whether was set at the right level, or if 30 or 45 days was more appropriate,” Ferguson said. “But they didn’t do that. There was no analysis done. But the decisions by inspectors, most of whom are white men, affect which properties are prioritized. An analysis by Bartram of violations and 311 complaints in the city between 2006 and 2015 found that building complaints were overwhelmingly concentrated in South and West side neighborhoods, such as Englewood and North Lawndale. Inspectors, however, used their discretion to cite more violations per complaint on the North and Northwest sides than they did on the South Side.
There were no working smoke detectors in the downstairs unit where Bramwell inhaled a fatal dose of smoke, according to fire department records. The Los Angeles Housing Department can enter the property into a city program that lets some tenants immediately halve their rent payments and send any additional money into an escrow account that landlords can access only to pay for repairs. Or the department can invoke its urgent repairs program in which the city hires its own contractors to fix life-threatening hazards and sends the landlord the bill.
“I’ve always been bewildered by Chicago,” Gross said. “New York and L.A. have all these programs — how does Chicago not?” “I thought, OK, it’s a start,” Patton Smith said. “It puts the onus on these real estate owners, and hell, it may save some people.” The list includes only properties that have been tied up in housing court for at least 18 months or that have been documented by the Buildings Department to have “immediate hazards.” It excludes owner-occupied properties with four or fewer units, and itthat have either flown under the city’s radar or have escaped legal scrutiny.
Chicago officials have also touted the city’s Troubled Buildings Initiative, which works with private nonprofits to scoop up derelict properties from negligent or under-resourced landlords and convey them to responsible developers for demolition and reconstruction.
The three-year pilot program would be implemented in three wards — the 20th Ward on the South Side, the 22nd Ward on the Southwest Side and the 49th Ward on the Far North Side — and then potentially expanded throughout the city. “The story is pretty consistent, that when these programs first go out, they catch a heck of a lot of things,” Miao said. “And then they slowly work basically as an incentive to lift the boat of all the housing stock in the community.”
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