Durham, NC Rental Inspections: Tenant Complaint Process (2026)

" Section 10-362(a) lists four ways a residential rental building qualifies for the reasonable-cause periodic-inspection program: three or more verified housing-code or unsafe-building-law violations within 12 months; visible code violations from outside the property; the administrator's actual knowledge of an unsafe condition; or, the tenant-facing trigger, "the building has been the subject of a complaint that substandard conditions exist within the building or there has been a request that the building be inspected," which places "the entire building" into the program. Beyond the periodic-inspection track, any tenant can also set the general enforcement machinery in motion: § 10-239(e)(1) lets the administrator open a formal complaint and hearing whenever a petition is filed by "at least five residents of the city" charging that a dwelling is unfit for human habitation, or whenever the administrator's own preliminary investigation, on any complaint, discloses a basis for such charges.

Once a building is in the § 10-362 program, the administrator establishes and runs a formal periodic-inspection schedule for it, going beyond a single complaint response. S. 160A-424(b).