Nayeli Fonseca spent a year pushing San José code enforcement before her landlord finally fixed the mold problem that she says contributed to her daughter needing surgery for infections in her adenoids and tonsils. The 38-year-old has rented in the Cadillac Winchester neighborhood for a decade, and during that time she dealt with both roach infestations and mold in her apartment, conditions she says affected the health of all three of her children.
Fonseca's case is now part of a broader push by San José tenants demanding reform to how the city enforces its housing code, according to San José Spotlight. Fonseca eventually moved from one unit to another within the same complex, where she says the mold was at least confined to the bathroom, and she filed a formal complaint after connecting with LUNA. She told the outlet she felt unable to help her family and experienced stress throughout the ordeal, and her daughter developed asthma along with the infections that required surgery.
A System Built on Self-Reporting
San José inspects apartments through a three-tier system, with inspection intervals of three, five or six years depending on a building's track record. Buildings with the most violations and the least compliance get checked every three years and pay the highest fees, while owners in the lowest tier are trusted to submit their own annual inspections to the city rather than face a city inspector. That self-certification model is exactly what the Healthy Homes Coalition wants scrapped, calling instead for third-party inspections rather than landlord self-certification, building-wide inspections once a violation is confirmed in a single apartment, registration of landlords who remain noncompliant, and real enforcement of penalties.
Gabriel Manrique argued that landlords inspecting their own buildings cannot be expected to document issues accurately, and he said the code enforcement department itself is understaffed. That staffing concern tracks with figures the city provided to the outlet: just 16 inspectors cover more than 110,000 apartments spread across roughly 6,750 buildings. San José issued only 32 citations and more than 500 compliance orders last fiscal year. Citations cover easily remedied issues like blight or graffiti and carry fines that Planning, Building and Code Enforcement spokesperson Marika Krause said run from $25 to $1,000 or more per violation; compliance orders address health and safety violations. The city's appeals board can levy higher fines for larger problems when a property owner still won't comply.
Voluntary Compliance Dominates the Numbers
Voluntary Compliance Dominates the Numbers Of the roughly 23,000 housing-code violations documented over three years, per the Law Foundation, only one case resulted in fines levied by the appeals hearing board, while most violations were resolved through voluntary compliance, according to Krause. Tristia Bauman, the Law Foundation's housing directing attorney, said that voluntary compliance lets landlords evade accountability by making temporary fixes without addressing root causes, and she called for real financial consequences for landlords running substandard residential buildings. San José code enforcement counters that property owners receive a checklist with notice of inspection and are given time to make corrections before any violations are even submitted for fines, as the department explained in a separate San José Spotlight report on landlords who say they need help rather than punishment.
Many of the properties landing in the city's toughest tier are there because of repeated violations, and those Tier 3 buildings face inspection every three years along with the highest fees, that same report notes. San José tenants broadly face a lack of awareness about how to file formal complaints or fear retaliation for doing so, per the coalition's findings. Cindy Tran said the city needs to improve its response to recurring and outstanding tenant issues, while the coalition contends San José landlords have skirted code violations while tenants continue living in deteriorating apartments.
City Points to a New Pilot Program
Krause said San José is already implementing some of the changes the coalition is seeking and that the city is willing to explore further alignment and work with the coalition to improve tenant conditions. The city launched a pilot program in spring 2026 that imposes more severe consequences on landlords who repeatedly leave violations unaddressed. Mayor Matt Mahan said no one should live in unsafe, unsanitary conditions, and he asked code enforcement managers to meet directly with the coalition and confirm that outstanding cases were fully resolved.
The Healthy Homes Coalition — organized by the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, LUNA and the Regional Tenant Organizing Network — has helped bring together roughly 300 to 400 residents into tenant organizations across South San José, East San José and downtown. The campaign is now urging the San José City Council to enact stronger measures addressing code violations citywide.
How Other California Jurisdictions Handle Inspections
San José isn't the only California jurisdiction wrestling with how aggressively to police rental housing. Los Angeles County's rental inspection program, set to assess roughly 115,761 units, mandates routine inspections every four years for each unit in unincorporated areas, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That program lets tenants pay reduced rent into an escrow account if landlords fail to make necessary repairs within 21 calendar days of notification, and repairs that imminently endanger a tenant's safety must be fixed within 24 hours of notice. Landlords whose properties land in the county's Rent Escrow Account Program face a $500 administrative fee per unit with unaddressed repair needs, with the whole system funded by an annual $86 per-unit fee that landlords can partially pass through to tenants.
