City licenses rooming houses

The city of Columbus has issued rooming-house licenses to the operator of nine halfway houses after they finally passed inspections.

City inspectors told the William Brady Organization that it needed to fix code violations at seven of nine houses before the city would approve the licenses. Inspectors had found broken drywall, missing kitchen tiles, peeling paint, broken windows, dead roaches and rodent droppings among other problems at the houses.

On Friday, after recent inspections, the city issued licenses for all nine houses, located mostly on the South and East sides.

“This time, there was a fine-toothed comb. Everything was up to code,” said Norman Whiteside, a Brady group spokesman.

The Brady group’s founders have been in the housing business since 2009, serving more than 3,000 people. But it never checked city and state codes setting minimum requirements and safety standards.

The city did not know the Brady organization had not obtained rooming house licenses until it received a complaint on Sept. 14 and The Dispatch reported on it.

“If it had not been for The Dispatch, or whoever complained, these things would not have been known,” Whiteside said.

Dana Rose, the city’s code-enforcement administrator, said the Brady group’s leaders cooperated.

“They kind of understand what we needed to talk about,” he said.

The licenses are good until March 5, 2019. The city will inspect the houses once a year going forward.