Has anyone had their township inspect their apartment?
My Fiancee and I live in a large apartment complex and have for more than a year. Randomly a month ago we were notified that a member from the township would be inspecting our apartment along with someone from our complex’s maintenance staff. My FI was home when the inspection occurred and the guy was very rude. He used a yardstick to measure all our furniture, looked in our kitchen cabinets, closets, etc. and was yelling that we have too much stuff/clutter. Now he’s coming back to re-inspect our apartment next week and I don’t know what to do. I’ve NEVER heard of a township official coming into your apartment (and no one came our first year there) and we may have a lot of unopened food in our cupboards and boxes for my FI’s home business, but we do not have anything that is a safety hazard or dirty and would attract rodents or bugs. The complex said if this guy deems our apartment "unsafe" we will have to pay a K fine per day and our lease will be terminated. Has anyone heard of this? I tried to Google it but nothing came up. I live in suburban Philadelphia.
It wasn’t because someone complained. The entire complex was inspected. I will Google the fire safety laws though. Thanks.
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There are a lot of municipalities that periodically perform inspections of multi-family housing buildings. It’s certainly not unusual.
However, the code enforcement officers that perform these inspections are not immune from the Constitution. They are required to obtain a warrant if you refuse consent to enter. My guess is that if you read your township ordinances carefully, you will find a provision that allows inspections, and another provision that requires inspectors to obtain a warrant if consent to inspect is denied.
Now, the warrant required is not a traditional search warrant. It is an "administrative inspection" warrant, which a judge can issue upon a showing that there is a reasonable reason to perform an inspection. In layman’s terms, it’s much easier to obtain an inspection warrant than a search warrant.
The City of Reading was sued by an apartment building owner. In the case, a city inspection officer asked the owner for permission to inspect the building, and the owner refused. The officer was unable to obtain a warrant. The officer then obtained a warrant to inspect another building the owner owned. The officer broke down the door with a sledgehammer. The owner sued the city, and the inspectors, for civil rights violations. The judge did *not* dismiss the case. My guess is that the city is still negotiating with the owner for a monetary settlement.
Normally, I would suggest simply giving consent to inspect, because if you refuse, the inspector may come back with a warrant, and act rude & obnoxious. But, if it were me, and the inspector already acted rude & obnoxious aafter I voluntarily gave consent, then I would tell him go f* off, and go get a warrant. But, that’s just me.
*** Read your town’s code. Print out the provision that requires a warrant. Then, if you want to justify your refusal to consent, then yoiu can just show the inspector the statute.
Google fire safety laws for your town. That is what this was, someone complained that they thought you were creating a fire hazard. The yardstick is a dead give away, there are laws regarding having space to safely walk, they were measuring that.
You can be fined and evicted if you are hording trash and the inspector did not approve of the place. You do not have a right to hord stuff to the point that you risk not only burning the apartment complex down, but risking the lives of the fire fighters that will come.
Do not assume by his rudeness that you failed. It could be just the opposite, the place is obviously not in violation and he is ticked off that someone wasted his time.