Rooming Inspections and Permits
The Allegheny County Health Department’s (ACHD) Housing and Community Environment Program permits and inspects all rooming houses, boarding homes, hotels, motels, nursing homes, and personal care boarding homes (PCBH) in the county.
A rooming house is a facility that houses four or more unrelated people in one or more rooms. The units inside a rooming house (either a room or group of rooms) have spaces for living and sleeping, but do not usually have areas for cooking or eating. Some of these facilities also require that individuals staying in different rooming units share a common bathroom. The most common example of a rooming house is a hotel or motel.
A boarding home is defined as a rooming house that also prepares and/or serves food to their residents. Nursing homes, PCBHs, and shelters are some examples of boarding homes.
Inspections
In addition to investigating any complaints that are submitted, our Environmental Health Specialists inspect these facilities on a regular basis. These inspections are an evaluation of the entire building including, but not limited to:
- Water supply
- Heating equipment
- Restroom facilities
- Garbage disposal
- Rodent, pest, and vector control
If you have a health or safety complaint about any of these facilities submit the complaint through the Allegheny County Complaint Portal or call us at 412-350-4046.
Permitting
Are you planning on building or opening a rooming house, boarding home, hotel, motel, nursing home, or Personal Care Boarding Home (PCBH)? The Allegheny Health Department (ACHD) requires that these types of facilities obtain a permit.
To get a permit, these facilities must go through a plan review process before being built or renovated. Facilities that serve food need to submit plans to ACHD’s Food Safety program.
Submitting your plans and having them reviewed prior to construction allows our inspectors to work with you to ensure that what you build follows ACHD’s rules and regulations. Making sure your plans are up to code will save you time and money.
To better help you understand what you need to do as part of the plan review process, we’ve put together a Rooming/Boarding Home Plan Review Application & Fact Sheet(PDF, 384KB). This document explains the steps in detail.
Rooming houses, boarding homes, and nursing homes are regulated under the ACHD’s Article VI: Houses and Community Environment(PDF, 580KB). View the current 2026 Fee Schedule(PDF, 235KB) for Rooming House plan review and permits.
Rooming House applications and plans may be submitted:
Public Service Rooming House
Facilities designated as a Public Service Rooming House are exempt from an annual permit fee. These facilities would still be subject to an initial plan review fee.
A Public Service Rooming House is defined as, “Any rooming house as defined in this Article operated by any school, hospital, government, or any benevolent, educational, philanthropic, humane, patriotic, religious, scientific or eleemosynary organization which offers its services or facilities for free or at a nominal rate to the public in order to act in relief of the public burdens or for the advancement of the public good. This definition does not include any association whose benefits and benevolence are restricted to its members or to a particular person or donor, rather than to the public at large.”
An application for the Public Service Rooming House designation can be submitted by:
If you have any questions or concerns, please call the Housing and Community Environment Program at 412-350-4046 and ask for a plan review inspector.