Broken smoke detectors, rodent infestations, defective heating systems, and emergency repairs left unresolved long past their deadlines fill Washington’s housing inspection records— where nearly 89,000 violations remain open, and thousands of rental properties cannot be matched to required registration records.
A new investigation by Rentrospect, an independent housing research project, found that 77,117 of the 79,454 open violations with repair deadlines had passed those deadlines as of Sept. 30.
“The families in Wards 7 and 8 are paying the most they can for homes the city’s own records are struggling to keep track of,” Rentrospect founder and CEO Kwame Rose wrote in correspondence with The Informer. “That’s the story we think is still out of sight.”…