This article first appeared on Outlier Media and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Nuballa Hollings wishes she had done a more thorough walkthrough before renting a home near Detroit’s Bagley neighborhood last December. It seemed nice at first. But almost as soon as she and her two children moved in, it was clear the house had problems.
Windows are nailed shut. Heat doesn’t reach the second floor, forcing the family to rely on space heaters. Neither the front nor back door locks properly. Worst of all, sewage regularly backs up into her basement.
“It literally smells like s— when you walk through my door,” she said. Hollings is a hairstylist who works out of her home. She said the condition of the property has hurt her business.
Many of the problems in Hollings’ home would likely have been addressed if the city had inspected the property. In Detroit, rental properties are legally required to have a certificate of compliance: proof that they passed an inspection and meet basic health and safety standards.
But the vast majority of Detroit rentals, including Hollings’, don’t have one.
In 2024, the city updated its rental ordinance to make compliance easier for landlords and expand access to safer rental housing. It’s barely made a difference.
When City Council approved the updated rules in late 2024, 10% of Detroit rentals had a certificate of compliance. City officials said they hoped to reach a 30% compliance rate within two years. Today, it’s just 14%.
Landlords who spoke with Outlier Media said for the most part they appreciate the changes, which streamlined inspections. But many of them said the city still relies too heavily on penalties and enforcement, rather than making compliance easier to achieve.
“Many responsible property owners are reconsidering whether they can continue operating in Detroit because the regulatory environment has become overly burdensome, unpredictable, and costly,” said David Alade, CEO of development firm Century Partners. “Some have left the Detroit market altogether.”
In mid-April, Outlier submitted a list of questions to the city asking it to respond to specific landlord complaints, its plans for increasing compliance, how it conducts blight ticket fine collection, and more. Outlier followed up three times seeking comment. The city did not answer any of the questions.
An inconsistent process
Housing advocates hailed the passage of the rental registry ordinance in 2017 for strengthening renter protections and creating a system intended to ensure safer housing.
Steven Rimmer, lead organizer with the Detroit Tenants Union, said properties with a certificate of compliance tend to have better conditions.
A timeline of Detroit’s rental ordinance
November 2017: City Council passes a revamped rental registry ordinance after years of weak enforcement. The new rules required landlords to register rentals, pass inspections every two to three years, resolve blight tickets and delinquent taxes, and obtain a certificate of compliance. Properties also had to pass an annual lead inspection. Tenants in uncertified homes could put their rent in escrow.
February 2018: Detroit begins rolling out the ordinance in six ZIP codes. A year later, only 10% of rentals were compliant.
October 2021: City Council scales back the rules, reducing lead inspections to every three years.
July 2024: Pressure grows for broader reforms as compliance remains low and few tenants use the city’s escrow program.
October 2024: City Council overhauls the ordinance. The update narrows requirements to pass inspection, eliminates lead testing for most properties, and modestly increases fines for noncompliance. It also sets out a path to restart the city’s escrow program.
“We would definitely prefer properties to have a certificate of compliance,” he said.
But a complicated inspection process and weak enforcement kept participation low.
The 2024 update included both incentives and tougher penalties. Landlords would only be required to complete a single inspection, limited to what the city considered essential health and safety issues. Controversially, the city dropped lead testing requirements for most properties.
The update also modestly increased fines tied to blight tickets and granted the city power to place liens on properties when owners failed to pay. That change has led to an uptick in fine collection — from 16% in 2023 to over 30% last year.
But compliance continues to lag. Outlier spoke with four landlords who own multiple buildings in Detroit. Two requested anonymity because they didn’t want to harm their relationship with the city.
Three said they don’t have a problem with the aims of the ordinance, and largely agreed the revised rules created clearer expectations.
“Having a clear set of relatively black and white guidelines has been a huge help,” Devon Caldwell, principal of Inkwell Partners, said by email. “With the new bulleted list of criteria for CofC (certificate of compliance) inspections, we now have a much better ability to anticipate inspector concerns and can push back constructively when something feels outside the scope of the checklist.”
Still, Caldwell and other landlords said inconsistently applied standards continue to make compliance challenging. They said they regularly struggled to schedule inspections, navigate the city’s complicated digital management platforms, and deal with inspectors who require different corrections.
“The administrative and clerical side of CoCs still creates significant friction,” Caldwell said. “That’s where I’m hoping the system can improve next.”
Some landlords also said they feel penalized for attempting to comply. In some cases, registering a property — a step before obtaining a certificate — immediately led to a ticket for noncompliance.
“The city needs to distinguish between responsible property owners who are making good-faith efforts to comply and negligent owners who are extracting value while allowing properties to deteriorate,” Alade said. “Right now, the system often treats both groups the same.”
A number of multifamily landlords told Outlier last year that Detroit’s regulatory and financial environment has made it increasingly difficult to run a profitable rental business.
‘It’s hard to find a reliable place’
Hollings stopped paying rent a few months ago, in part because her landlord wasn’t making repairs — but also because she didn’t know who to pay. In February, her property manager stopped responding to her messages, and Hollings said no other representative for the landlord ever contacted her.
The 2024 update also stipulated that the city would relaunch its escrow program, allowing tenants in uncertified homes to place their rent in a city-run account until landlords complete repairs. Full implementation was expected by spring 2025, but it’s still not up yet.
New Jersey-based Re Investment Solutions LLC is the listed taxpayer for Hollings’ home. Outlier sent messages to its CEO, Dharmesh Patel, through his LinkedIn, company website and attorney, but did not get a response.
Hollings got an eviction notice in April. The case was dismissed, but she agreed to move out by June 8.
Now, she and her two kids, ages 8 and 9, have to find a new place on short notice. And with so few rentals having passed an inspection, she’s worried her next home will have the same kinds of problems.
“There’s nothing but raggedy houses left,” Hollings said. “As soon as you pull up, it’s like the grass is not cut, there’s holes in the doors. Like, they’re not even trying to fix these houses up.”