Mountain View, CA Rental Property Rules: Repairs & Habitability (2026)

Sec. 58, in Chapter 25's hotel, motel, and multi-family housing inspection article, lists the conditions city inspectors check when they evaluate whether a rental building is being properly maintained. The list runs from structural defects, deteriorated foundations, walls, and roof supports that cannot safely carry their loads, to core utility failures: no potable water source, no hot and cold running water at fixtures, a missing or inoperative water heater, no connection to sewage disposal, and a heating system unable to maintain seventy degrees in habitable rooms.

It also covers safety items such as damaged electrical service, blocked or missing exits, missing fire protection equipment, and unapproved elevators, plus livability conditions such as excessive dampness, insect, vermin, or rodent infestation, inadequate garbage storage, missing swimming pool fencing, and unsanitary pools, saunas, or hot tubs. The final paragraph of the section sets the enforcement standard: any of these conditions must be corrected, alone or combined with others, once the defect reaches a severity that endangers the life, health, safety, or welfare of the public or of building occupants.

Sec. 61 then folds a qualifying defect into the city's dangerous-building process under Chapter 8, Article V, meaning the same repair-or-abate procedures used for structurally unsafe buildings apply to a habitability failure found under this article. Sec. 59 requires inspectors to check all common areas and unoccupied units and as many occupied units as the inspector deems appropriate based on the building's age and condition, and Sec. 60 issues a certificate of code compliance only once every violation found has been corrected.