Pitt County, NC Rental Inspections: Tenant Complaint Process (2026)

S. 153A-364, and separately requires inspectors to act whenever they have "reasonable cause" to believe unsafe, unsanitary, hazardous, or unlawful conditions exist in a structure. The ordinance defines reasonable cause to include four specific triggers: a landlord or owner with more than two verified housing-code violations within a 12-month period; a tenant complaint that substandard conditions exist or a request that the building be inspected; actual knowledge of an unsafe condition by the department; or violations visible from outside the structure, an adjoining parcel, or a road.

Any one of these four conditions is enough on its own to authorize entry. Once reasonable cause exists, an Inspector may enter the premises at any reasonable hour after presenting proper credentials, per the same section. There is no separate tenant hotline or online complaint form written into the ordinance; the complaint itself, once made to the Inspections Department, satisfies the statutory trigger. Inspectors who find defects proceed under Section 30, which lets them condemn a building that is unfit for human habitation, dangerous to life, or a fire hazard, and requires written notice to both owner and occupant.

If the owner does not correct the problem, Sections 31 through 34 set out a mailed notice, a hearing before the Inspector within ten days, a written corrective order with at least 60 days to comply, and an appeal to the Pitt County Board of Commissioners within ten days of that order.