AUSTIN, Texas – Code departments across the state are overwhelmed with complaints about property code violations because of damages from the historic February winter storm.

When a property has damage is it up to the owner to fix it, but with so many properties in need of repairs, tenants are now calling on city code departments even more to get their landlords to fix their problems. 

Lamont Howard is one of inspectors dealing with those calls for the Austin Code Department. 

Normally Howard works about 30 cases at a time, but he says his work load has doubled.

From February 15 to March 11, the 311 hotline in Austin received 1,650 calls. Of those calls, the code department worked 539 cases and issued at 21 notices of violation. In Dallas, the code department received 1,133 calls to its 311 hotline during those dates. The department had 447 active cases and a spokesperson estimates they issued well over 200 notices of violations.

Once a call is routed to code department, the complaint ends up on Howard’s desk, but most of his work is done from his truck. He has a computer next to the driver’s seat that houses all of his case files so he can update and gather information from the field.

His first step when he arrives on site is to speak to the property manager or a staff member to notify her or him of the report and see where the owners are with making the repairs. Next he has to update the report in the system and issue an official notice of violation to the property owner. 

Ella Williams is a southeast Austin resident living with her grandson and great granddaughter in an apartment that was damaged during the storm. 

When Howard inspected her unit, she showed him water spots in her ceilings, soft spots in her floors from flooding and damage to her walls and doors.  

“The ceiling incident and the water, I say, roaches are coming, just running down up and down the wall and coming from everywhere,” Williams said. “My body is physically tired.” 

“Everything I saw in there was a deficiency,” said Howard. “Since that leak did cause structural damage, that’s a notice of violation for that.”

That’s despite property staff telling Howard that repairs had already been completed.

But when dealing with storm damages, code departments are giving landlords leeway. 

Owners now have 30 days to make repairs and two days to provide accommodations like drinking water or portable toilets, heating devices, or cooking appliances. 

Howard will then work with property owners to develop a detailed action plan which must show continual progress in making repairs. 

“If they do not move forward to fix it, then we move forward and start issuing citations,” he said. 

The problem for housing rights advocates is that these leniencies are putting tenants in between a rock and a hard place. They say many complaints are not getting proper attention and that the process caters more to a landlord’s need than renters who have to live in these conditions during these lengthy delays. 

“We can’t make them do things right away, we have to follow the law and there has to be due process,” Howard said. 

Spectrum News 1 called Williams about a week after this story was recorded and she said she’d yet to hear from property management or the owner.