u/BorisDaGod

Intro Note: Long Post for sure but I think it's neat. Columbus code enforcement data is probably the highest signal tool to understanding what's going on with certain areas of the city. I also just really don't like rats lol. Heatmap of rat reports in the comments.

I've been building a tool that maps Columbus 311 and code enforcement data so renters can see what's actually happening at and around an address before they sign a lease. It pulls in heat maps, individual complaint reports, and map overlays, and you can sort by problem type (rats, bedbugs, trash, structural issues, etc). The point is to see beyond what's been reported at your address. It's what's going on at neighboring addresses too, because some of the stuff that affects your quality of life (hoarder houses, drug activity, illegal dumping, chronic vacancy) wouldn't be obvious on an apartment tour but shows up clearly in 311 data. Hoping to release this tool within the next week.

One quick caveat on the rat data specifically: code enforcement complaints skew heavily toward rental properties because most homeowners aren't going to report their own house to the city. So this is really a map of reported rodent activity, which in practice means a map of rental neighborhoods with rodent problems. That's worth noting, but for renters or prospective home buyers -- who are exactly the people searching for this -- it's also exactly the relevant dataset.

Rat reports aren't scattered evenly across the city. They cluster hard into specific corridors, and each corridor has a different story behind it.

#1) The Cleveland Avenue Spine (Linden into Northland)

Draw a band about six blocks wide centered on Cleveland Avenue from I-670 north to Karl Road. Inside that band: 426 rat reports across 328 different addresses. That's 17% of every rat report filed in the entire city, concentrated in less than 1% of its area.

Cleveland Avenue itself only accounts for about 15 of those reports. The other 96% are on the side streets feeding into it: Howey Rd, Grasmere Ave, E Weber Rd, E 18th, Atwood Terrace, Hamilton Ave, etc. Cleveland Ave is the spine. The rats live on the tributaries. The worst stretch is the Linden band between I-670 and Hudson: 158 reports from 116 different addresses. Roughly one out of every two distinct properties in that band filed a rat complaint in the last 16 months.

What's probably going on: this corridor is dominated by single-family rentals and small duplexes that turn over frequently and where maintenance is reactive, not preventive. Nobody's doing proactive rodent exclusion, nobody's coordinating with the neighbor, and code enforcement is complaint-driven so it's always one step behind.

One report describes garbage piled three feet high in a backyard, rats nesting in the pile since March, the health department finding multiple dead rats in the driveway, and two-foot-high grass. Another describes a duplex filled with trash that's never put out for collection, overgrown yards, and rats infesting the property, with squatters on one side.

What makes this corridor unusual is how continuous it is. It's a rat highway highway. The reports stretch for miles, every month, on every connecting street. There's no gap in the food, no gap in the cover, and no gap in the neglected yards that connect one block to the next. If you're apartment hunting on any side street within a few blocks of Cleveland Ave between I-670 and Hudson, the data says expect rodent activity. Not because your specific building is bad, but because the entire corridor is sustaining a population that no single landlord can solve.

##2) The Fairgrounds Zone (E 15th through E 26th)

Just south of where the Cleveland Ave corridor starts, there's a tight grid of numbered avenues that lights up on its own: 92 rat reports across 68 different addresses.

Every numbered avenue from E 15th to E 26th has at least 4 separate addresses reporting rats. E 18th Ave leads with 11 reports. Twelve different streets, all reporting independently, all within about a half mile of the Ohio State Fairgrounds.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that proximity. What I can say is what the data shows: the reports are there, they're dense, and they span every residential street in the area.

The Ohio Expo Center at 717 E 17th Ave is a massive complex with livestock facilities that hosts over 150 events a year: the Quarter Horse Congress (4,000+ horses over four weeks), the Ohio State Fair, the Ohio Beef Expo, and dozens of other livestock and food events. It has ties for 2,000 cattle. The buildings include turn-of-the-century pavilions with the kind of old foundations that harbor established rodent colonies. Year-round livestock events mean year-round animal feed, grain, and food vendor waste.

The surrounding neighborhood is Milo-Grogan: historically industrial, lots of old housing stock, significant vacancy. The Ohio History Connection is also running a major multi-year construction project on E 17th Ave that broke ground in fall 2024 and runs through 2027. Construction and demolition are one of the biggest triggers for displacing rat colonies into surrounding residential blocks. So you've got the fairgrounds generating a permanent food source, construction pushing existing colonies outward, and a surrounding neighborhood full of aging rentals with plenty of entry points. The rats (POSSIBLY) radiate from the fairgrounds onto every residential street in range.

#3) The Tamarack / Red Robin Zone (Northland)

This one is quieter in raw numbers (41 reports) but arguably the most revealing pattern in the dataset. The reports span across multiple apartment complexes, townhome courts, and independent houses throughout the zone. This isn't a situation where one poorly managed building is driving all the complaints.

This is the area around Tamarack Boulevard and Red Robin Road just north of Morse Road: a dense cluster of 1960s and early-70s garden-style apartment complexes surrounded by single-family homes and small townhome courts.

The count is low but the pattern is what matters: dozens of independent properties, not units inside one complex, all reporting rats in the same window. That means the rodent population isn't driven by one bad property manager. It's neighborhood-wide. These complexes all back up to each other with continuous green space, shared parking areas, and communal dumpsters. A rat doesn't see property lines. It sees one unbroken habitat from Karl Road to Cleveland Avenue. The complexes themselves are 50-60 years old with deteriorating building envelopes. But the surrounding single-family homes are reporting too, which tells you the population has outgrown the complexes and saturated the area.

#Summary/Takeaway

1. I don't like rats.
2. If you're looking at renting or buying a property in this area, do additional due-diligence. Or don't. I don't care at all really. I've just been locked into this data for the past few weeks and if I don't share stuff like this , I'm just a guy sitting alone in my room analyzing city code enforcement data for fun.

Long post but figured this was interesting enough to share lol. Been working through a ton of code enforcement data for a tool I'm building.

What I did: I pulled every code enforcement report filed in Columbus over roughly the past 11 months. I grouped reports by apartment complex, filtered to complexes with at least 5 buildings and 15+ reports, and scored them based on the type and severity of the violations. Life-safety emergencies like no heat, no electricity, sewage backups, and structural problems were weighted heaviest. I also factored in what percentage of a complex's reports were rated severe (level 3 or 4 out of 4) and how many different kinds of problems showed up.

#1) Lakeside Villas (Northland) 122 reports across 16 buildings. 48% rated severe. 44% rated critical.

The single highest-scoring complex in the dataset, and it's not close. The dominant pattern in the records is loss of heat and electricity. The data shows 51 separate no-heat reports and 31 no-electricity reports for this complex. The records paint a picture of what happened in late February 2026: electrical service to multiple buildings was apparently disconnected, leaving dozens of units without power or heat during one of the coldest stretches of winter. Reports describe this lasting two-plus weeks. Some reports then describe tenants running generators with extension cords routed through windows, which the city flagged as its own fire hazard. What puts this at #1 isn't just neglect of individual units. The records suggest a single infrastructure failure that took out services for an entire section of the complex at once, with no apparent rapid response from management. Pretty sure some units were also forced to evacuate during this.

#2) Village Court (Northland) 48 reports across 21 buildings. 79% rated severe.

This is the highest severity rate of any qualifying complex in the entire dataset. Every problem category in my scoring system fires here: pests, mold, no heat, structural issues, water shutoffs, unresponsive management. The records include a report where Columbus Fire forced entry into a unit because a smoke alarm was going off. According to the report, the alarm was triggered by smoke coming from a malfunctioning furnace in a unit that already had an open no-heat violation. Another report describes a unit where the upstairs neighbor's bathwater was draining into the downstairs tenant's toilet. Yet another describes a resident who filed maintenance requests by phone, online portal, and in person, and watched every one get marked "closed" without any work being done.

If Lakeside Villas is the worst by scale, the records suggest Village Court is the worst by concentration. Nearly 4 out of every 5 reports filed here are severe.

#3) Capital Park Apartments (North Linden) 118 reports across 44 buildings. The largest complex in the top 5. 42% severe, 26% critical.

The lower severity percentage is partly a function of size. Spread across 44 buildings, you get more lower-level reports mixed in. But there are still 31 critical-level events in the records. The pattern that stands out here is systematic safety-system failures: 9 reports of missing or inoperable smoke detectors, multiple reports of exposed wiring, open furnace covers, and flammable materials stored improperly. One report documents a single unit with an inoperable stove, no heat, no hot water, and inoperable smoke detectors all at once. Another describes homeless individuals sleeping in a flooded basement, with the leasing office aware of the situation.

#4) Gateway Apartments (Linden / Mifflin) 48 reports across 17 buildings. 56% severe. Every problem category fires.

Gateway stands out from the rest of this list for a specific reason: multiple reports describe what tenants characterize as retaliation. In at least three separate reports, tenants describe utilities (which were included in their rent) being shut off after they filed code complaints. That's a different pattern from the "ignore everything" approach described at the other complexes. Other records describe a tenant whose kitchen ceiling collapsed and whose unit flooded repeatedly. Reports indicate she had been staying in a hotel and in her car. Another describes a unit where Columbia Gas shut off service due to unresolved mechanical issues in the apartment, with the rental office reportedly not addressing it.

#5) Stonecreek Apartments (Northland, south of Morse Rd)

59 reports across 12 buildings. 54% severe.

The signature pattern here is building-wide pest infestation -- 11 rat reports and 7 roach reports, with residents describing the problem as affecting entire buildings, not just individual units. This is layered on top of recurring whole-building water and electric outages, and a report where Columbus Fire condemned a furnace for unsafe operation.

Caveats (please read)

• This covers ~11 months of data. A complex could look terrible because of one catastrophic stretch rather than year-round neglect. Lakeside Villas and Stonehenge may fall into this category.
• Small complexes get filtered out. A truly awful 5-unit building run by a slumlord might only generate a handful of reports and miss the threshold entirely.
• I'm reporting what the code enforcement records say. I haven't independently verified the claims tenants made in their reports.
• This isn't legal advice, and I'm not accusing anyone of anything. These are public records. If you're considering any of these properties, do your own research.
• There are probably worse complexes than these all things considered -- code enforcement data tends to be light on violence-related data for example. This is just based on the data provided.