Housing codes are the backbone of an effective healthy homes program. The codes set the minimum standards that must be met by all housing - whether existing or new - to protect the health or the residents. Some communities call them property maintenance codes or sanitation codes but their scope and function is similar. Click here to learn more about the five regulatory approaches to healthier homes.

The National Conference of State Legislatures and NCHH developed a draft summary of state laws that impact healthy homes.  Thanks to HUD and CDC for the support on this summary.

Finding State Housing Codes

Two organizations maintain summaries of state laws that may environmental health issues:  the National Conference for State Legislatures (NCLS) and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI).  The ELI database focuses on indoor air quality. 

If you are looking for a particular state, go to the state's webpage and click on the link to the legislative branch - often called the General Assembly. Find the search engine and search for the words such as housing or rodent. Use those links to find the right section. Few states have housing, health, property maintenance, or sanitation codes. NCHH is planning to do a comprehensive assessment later in 2008.

Look below to see if NCHH has already done a survey for your state.

Finding Local Housing Codes

NCHH has found three references that are helpful to find local ordinances. Go to www.municode.com, www.generalcode.com/webcode2.html or municipalcodes.lexisnexis.com/.  www.municode.com offers the unique feature of searching across all of the codes in a single state. They are planning to expand the service to multi-state searches soon. You may need to check both of these services since municipalities choose one or the other.

Look below to see if NCHH has already done a survey for your state.

Summaries Developed by NCHH

As NCHH prepares its training partners to teach the Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioner course in a community, it develops a brief summary of the healthy homes provisions in the community.  NCHH provides students with this summary. The instructors integrate the summary into the discussion. 

For your reference, NCHH is posting the summaries it has prepared in the table below.  Please note that the summaries may be incomplete and out-of-date.