Benton County, WA Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

010(c) requires that all buildings erected, altered, repaired, removed, demolished or converted in unincorporated Benton County (except electric utility substations and related uninhabited structures) conform to the 2021 International Building Code, and separately adopts the Uniform Code for the Abatement of Dangerous Buildings, 1997 Edition, as the county's mechanism for condemning and abating unsafe structures. 070. 080 lets the county seek injunctive or equitable relief in court to compel compliance and to enjoin continued violations, with the costs of that action taxed against the violator; the Building Department may also accept a written assurance of discontinuance in lieu of litigation.

This authority reaches only unincorporated county land: Kennewick, Richland, West Richland and Prosser enforce dangerous-building abatement under their own municipal codes. The county's adoption of the Uniform Code for the Abatement of Dangerous Buildings gives inspectors the standards for classifying a structure as substandard (structural, fire, sanitation or occupancy hazards) and the notice-and-hearing procedure that code prescribes before a building can be ordered vacated or razed.