Taunton, MA Rental Inspections: Inspection Programs (2026)

Taunton Code § 364-1, the entirety of Chapter 364, requires every rooming house and boardinghouse in the city to undergo a yearly inspection, and sets a hard deadline: the inspection has to be conducted, by all three departments, the Fire Department, the Board of Health, and the Building Department, by May 1 of each year. The chapter puts the follow-through obligation on the property owner, not the inspecting departments: once the inspection is done, the owner has to hand copies of it to the Board of License Commissioners, and those copies are the trigger the Commissioners need before they'll issue the rooming house or boardinghouse permit that keeps the property legally operating.

Chapter 364 was adopted by the Municipal Council on June 27, 2006, carried forward from § 12-3 of the City's 2010 Code, and the chapter's general references point directly to the zoning chapter, Ch. 440, since a rooming or boardinghouse use has to be zoning-compliant in addition to passing its annual inspection. The Fire Department separately charges a fee for this inspection work under its own fee schedule at § 250-12: $30 per unit for the boarding or rooming house inspection, and another $30 per unit if a reinspection is needed.

Because the three-department inspection and the licensing renewal are linked, a rooming house that skips or fails its inspection risks losing its Board of License Commissioners permit along with facing whatever code violations the inspecting departments find.