Troubled and At-Risk Properties

Montgomery County, Maryland is home to approximately 1.06 million people.  Approximately 34.5% of occupied housing units in the County are renter occupied. The demand for rental housing is growing and aging housing stock is challenging to maintain. As such, property owners and/or property managers play a vital role in the community as they are responsible for providing and preserving one of the most basic human necessities – shelter. Because of this vital need, Montgomery County Government enacted legislation to motivate certain property owners and managers to improve the living conditions of the apartments they own and/or manage by reducing the overall number and severity of violations existing on their properties. The designation of Troubled Properties is also intended to assist the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) in prioritizing where to focus its limited housing code inspection resources among the approximately 690 multifamily rental properties in Montgomery County; these properties contain approximately 80,032 individual rental units.

 

Our housing Code Enforcement team conducts legally mandated inspections of multifamily apartment buildings to determine which properties are housing code “Compliant”, “At-Risk” of being troubled, or “Troubled”. In addition, the team annually addresses over 10,000 Montgomery County 3-1-1 service requests regarding safety and maintenance upkeep concerns for all types of residential properties, vacant lots, and the exterior of commercial buildings.

 

Chapter 29 ( §29-22) of the Montgomery County Code and the accompanying regulations define “Troubled” and “At-Risk” properties and set criteria for determining if a property fits into either category.  In general, a “Troubled Property” is a multifamily rental property with numerous and or severe “health and safety” housing code violations such as:

Additionally, a property designated as Troubled must develop and implement a corrective action plan that describes in detail the specific actions that the landlord will take within a specified time schedule to both identify and correct current and ongoing housing code violations in a timely manner and prevent future housing code violations to the greatest extent possible. A troubled property must also submit a quarterly log of its internal maintenance calls upon the request of DHCA.

 

DHCA will designate an individual property as Troubled based on a comparison of its most recent inspection results with the results of all other properties inspected during the same time period. Each year, DHCA uses the results of the preceding year’s multifamily housing code inspections to calculate which properties should be designated as Troubled or At-Risk.  DHCA calculates two numerical scores for each multifamily property inspected: The Total Number of Violations Score (the “TV” Score), and the Severity of Violations Score (the “SV” Score). If a property’s scores exceed the annual thresholds established by DHCA, that property will be designated as a Troubled or At-Risk Property. 

A multifamily apartment building that is well maintained and code “Compliant” is inspected every three years. At-Risk properties will be inspected at the discretion of DHCA annually, biennially, or triennially.  Troubled properties will be inspected annually until DHCA determines that the property is no longer Troubled.

How can the Troubled Property designation be removed from a property? 

A property designated as Troubled or At-Risk may have the designation removed at the time its TV and SV scores no longer exceed the thresholds at which properties are designated as Troubled or At-Risk, based upon inspection by DHCA, such that they are no longer located in the applicable quadrants of the X-Y scatter graph specified in the regulations.  Additionally, for Trouble properties the DHCA Director must determine that the corrective action plan for the rental housing has been successfully completed.  Further, for properties designated as Troubled, failure to submit the required corrective action plan and quarterly maintenance logs will result in those properties remaining on the Troubled property list.  

Properties Inspected in FY23 and Inspection Results