ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship of code enforcement to the urban poor. It begins with the premise that code enforcement in this context is qualitatively different, in substance and approach, from the role played by government programs aimed at maintaining and upgrading the stock of existing housing in well-maintained suburban areas, upper-income neighborhoods, and "gray" areas. Municipal housing code enforcement often leads to rent increases, tenant moves to evictions, and reduction in the low-rent housing stock, and thus may harm low-income tenants more than it helps them. A principal device for governmental intervention into the existing low-income urban housing market is municipal housing code enforcement. The two premises of an effective code enforcement process for low-income urban areas —that is, one that ends with the speedy removal of substandard conditions, without harm to the tenant —are: the primacy of housing rights over property rights, and the right of tenants to exercise meaningful control over their own residential environment.
