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Office of Inspector General
City of Chicago
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Report of the Office of Inspector General:
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Department of Buildings Complaint-Based Inspections Audit
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April 2018
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Joseph M. Ferguson Inspector General
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
City o f Chicago
740 N. Sedgwick SlreeL Suite 200 Chicago. Illinois 60654 Telephone: (773)478-7799 Fax: (773) 478-3949
April 10,2018
To the Mayor, Members of the City Council, City Clerk, City Treasurer, and residents of the City of Chicago:
The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed an audit of the Department of Buildings's (DOB) complaint-based inspection operations. The objectives of the audit were to determine whether DOB meets required deadlines for responding to building complaints, whether the Department effectively prioritizes complaints, and whether the records of building code violations available to the public on the City's Data Portal and DOB's Building Violations web page are complete and accurate.
OIG concluded that DOB does not have effective strategies for prioritizing complaint-based inspections, which results in potential health and safety hazards going unaddressed, and that the City's websites do not provide the public with a property's complete violation history.
The audit revealed that DOB met its response deadline for only 36.5% of complaints; had a backlog of over 5,000 open complaints dating back to 2013, including a number that described serious threats to life and safety; and summarily closed more than 2,000 complaints without addressing even those describing plainly hazardous situations. Furthermore, DOB set complaint response deadlines that exceed the 21-day deadline prescribed by Municipal Code of Chicago (MCC), thereby undermining City Council's stated intent to prevent significant delays between the receipt of a complaint and th...
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