Fauquier County, VA Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

County Code Sec. 5-5 gives the Board of Supervisors authority over unsafe buildings anywhere in unincorporated Fauquier County: any building, wall or other structure that might endanger the public health or safety of county residents. Subsection (a) requires an owner to remove, repair or secure such a structure whenever the Board's own ordinance or resolution prescribes it. Subsection (b) lets the Board step in itself, through its agents or employees, once the owner has had reasonable notice and a reasonable time to act and still has not removed, repaired or secured the structure.

If the county does the work, subsection (c) makes the cost chargeable to the property owner and collectible the same way the county collects taxes and levies, and subsection (d) turns any unpaid charge into a lien against the property itself, alongside the standard tax-collection remedies.

Because Fauquier adopted the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code (USBC) by reference in Sec. 5-1, the Building Official's office created under Sec. 5-2 is the agency that typically identifies and processes an unsafe structure before it reaches the Board. Sec. 5-5.2 carves unsafe-structure cases out of the county's civil-penalty schedule entirely: violations involving USBC Section 105, Unsafe Structures or Structures Unfit for Human Habitation, are prosecuted only as misdemeanors, with a fine capped at whatever Code of Virginia Sec. 36-106 authorizes and a court-ordered abatement period after conviction, rather than through the $100/$350 civil-summons track used for lesser USBC violations.