Kenner, LA Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

Sec. 5-63 of the Kenner Code of Ordinances is the city's core blight-abatement tool. It applies to 'all buildings or structures, and all parts thereof,' and lists several independent triggers: a structure found, after inspection, not to meet the minimum housing standards because it is unsafe, unsanitary, unfit for human habitation, or lacks adequate egress; a structure that constitutes a fire hazard or is otherwise dangerous to human life; or a structure that, relative to its existing use, is a hazard to safety or health because of inadequate maintenance, dilapidation, obsolescence, or abandonment.

Any one of those conditions is enough for the city to declare the structure a public nuisance. Once declared, the section requires that the nuisance 'shall be abated by repair, rehabilitation, demolition or removal,' giving the owner options short of tear-down where the building can be brought back into compliance, but authorizing the more severe remedies where it cannot. Where demolition or removal is the chosen remedy, Sec. 5-63 ties the city's procedure to Louisiana's own dangerous-building statute, R.S. 33:4761 et seq., rather than setting out a separate local demolition process.

This nuisance declaration sits inside the same Minimum Housing Standards Code enforced by the Division of Housing Improvement under Sec. 5-65, so the same inspection, right-of-entry, complaint-and-hearing, and appeal machinery in Sec. 5-66 through Sec. 5-72 applies before an owner is ordered to repair or a structure is condemned for demolition.