Pontiac, MI Rental Inspections: Tenant Complaint Process (2026)

Multiple dwellings and rooming houses in Pontiac are inspected on a regular cycle under Chapter 22's state-housing division, and Section 22-763 adds tenant-driven triggers on top of that cycle. Under subsection (a), the Department of Building Safety must inspect every regulated multiple dwelling or rooming house at least once every three years if ownership has not changed, stretching to six years once a property has passed inspection clean and stayed under the same owner for six years. Subsection (c) then lists the owner's duties toward leaseholds specifically: the owner must notify a tenant of the Department's request to inspect, make a good-faith effort to get permission and arrange the visit, and, most directly, must provide access to the leasehold whenever a tenant of that leasehold has made a complaint to the Department of Building Safety.

That complaint provision means a single tenant call can force inspection access to their unit independent of the building's regular three- or six-year cycle. Section 22-764 gives tenants a second route: subsection (f) allows a tenant to request inspection of the dwelling unit directly, so long as the tenant pays the inspection fee. Section 22-764 also requires the owner to post the certificate of compliance in a conspicuous location and sets that certificate's three-year validity period, and it makes reoccupying a unit after June 30, 2012, without a valid certificate a municipal civil infraction subject to a $500.00 fine per day.

Read together, Sections 22-763 and 22-764 give a Pontiac tenant two separate ways to get city inspectors into a unit: filing a complaint or paying for a requested inspection.