Inside Houston City Hall, frustration was palpable as Councilmember Letitia Plummer’s long-fought apartment inspection ordinance, years in the making and designed to protect tenants from slumlords, died in a wave of procedural hesitations and political caution.
What began as a policy push to bring accountability to deteriorating rental complexes ended in a delayed decision.
The proposal, formally known as the Houston Multi-Family Habitability Code, would have created a new inspection and enforcement system targeting high-risk apartment complexes across the city.
It called for the creation of an Apartment Standards Enforcement Committee (ASEC), a cross-departmental task force pulling representatives from the city’s Police, Fire, Health, Housing, Solid Waste and City Attorney departments and a representative property owner and tenant, to coordinate how Houston handles substandard properties.
Under the ordinance, multi-family rental buildings with persistent health and safety complaints or at least ten verified code violations in a six-month period would have been labeled “High-Risk Rental Buildings.” Owners of these properties would then face increased scrutiny and routine inspections, a first for Houston, where more than half of the residents are renters.
Years in the making
Plummer, who represents At-Large Position 4, spoke of residents “barricading themselves in bathrooms because rats were taking over their apartments,” and of families paying rent to live in “communities that are not fair.”
“If they [residents] call 311 on a mold issue, they have to go through the Health Department,” Plummer told the Council. “It takes a long time to get things rectified. We don’t have time to wait. Residents can’t even live there. These folks are paying rent every single day. They can’t afford food, they can’t afford gas. If nothing else, this sends a message to those landlords that we are watching them. This is not because I’m leaving. I’m doing this because I’ve been fighting for this for years.”
Plummer, who will soon be stepping down from her current seat as she runs for Harris County judge next year, reminded colleagues that the conversation dates back to 2004 under Mayor Bill White, with every prior attempt to implement a citywide inspection program “failing every single time.”
Despite the moral clarity of her plea, Plummer faced a wall of institutional hesitation. City Attorney Arturo Michel warned that the current draft lacked an appeal process and contained “due process issues” that could render it unenforceable.
“I had members ask me to have hearings on it and I’m listening to the members, I’m listening to the stakeholders,” Mayor John Whitmire said. “Urgency is important, but doing it right is even more important and I don’t think we’re going to change each other’s minds.”
He described the ordinance as “an unfinished product” at the finish line, warning that rushing it could backfire, potentially reducing housing stock and worsening homelessness if owners simply shut down failing properties rather than fix them.
Urgency and precision
The divide between Plummer’s urgency and the administration’s insistence on perfection fueled a back-and-forth on the council floor.
Councilmember Sallie Alcorn, who has sat beside Plummer for six years, defended her colleague’s persistence.
“She has definitely had the urgency on her side,” Alcorn said. “As a city, we don’t go to apartment complexes nearly enough. We don’t have the bandwidth. Public Works goes and looks at the outside. If it’s not falling down, we move along. We’re reactive only to health department complaints. We do sit here week after week and hear about deplorable conditions. We hear that we have the poorest people in the whole country and those are the people who are living in these apartments. I want to stay here and put some protections in place.”
But industry voices were less convinced. Casey Morgan, CEO of the Houston Apartment Association (HAA), praised Plummer’s intent but argued the ordinance was not ready, adding the organization has sent a counter proposal with recommended solutions.
“We, too, are supportive of this concept,” Morgan said. “However, HAA is not supportive of the proposed ordinance in its current form. Our biggest concern is if we unnecessarily rush this process now, we risk losing the momentum that you have built on this critical topic and ultimately pass a fraud proposal, one that the administration has expressed some enforceability concerns and one that possibly would not yield the results that we want.”
Morgan’s remarks sparked a tense exchange with Plummer, who accused HAA of dragging its feet. She accused Morgan of being unavailable for a meeting she organized, bringing two past presidents of the association who are also property owners to the table.
“If this has been something that is so important to your organization, then why has it not been an ongoing conversation to try to come up with some type of solution on this?” Plummer fired back. “There’s been urgency for four years and if you have been here to listen to people complaining and literally losing their lives and not being able to live in a safe space. Do you even listen to those people?… What are the guardrails?”
Councilmember Edward Pollard added that roughly 75% of his district’s residents live in apartments, many calling weekly about dangerous living conditions.
“I do believe that our colleague and a member of this council who has put forth an immense amount of work over the past several years on this topic, should get a vote, whether you’re agreeing with this language or not,” Pollard said. “We’ve heard public testimony week after week and actually year after year, about people wanting to see this body pass a reform ordinance that is going to target slumlord property owners…there has to be something that we push as a body to show that we give the tenants that we are trying to put forth meaningful reforms.”
What’s next?
As the discussion stretched on, procedural confusion gave way to exasperation. Plummer pressed for a roll-call vote, pleading with colleagues to “just vote on the item.” But one by one, councilmembers voiced hesitations, not about the goal, but about the details.
When the vote finally came, the item was tagged for referral, effectively killing it for the current session. For tenant advocates, the proposed code would have made Houston one of the few Texas cities to codify habitability standards and routine rental inspections, in compliance with Section 214.219 of the Texas Local Government Code.
Because of the concerns, the City Council voted 9-7 to not call the item up for a vote during the meeting, instead proposing to hear the item on Dec. 10.
As the meeting adjourned, Plummer’s disappointment was visible. “It’s never perfect,” she said. “We have to do something right now.”
