Tulare County, CA Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

Section 7-15-3300 adopts the State Housing Law Regulations found in Title 25, Division 1, Chapter 1, Subchapter 1 of the California Code of Regulations for all unincorporated Tulare County territory, and § 7-15-3310 designates the county's Resource Management Agency as the 'enforcement agency' and the Board of Supervisors as the 'governing board' for those regulations. Section 7-15-3320 then declares four categories of conditions to be public nuisances: a residential building that has become unsafe, injurious to health, indecent, offensive to the senses, or that obstructs a county park, square, street or highway, or constitutes a fire hazard; any dangerous building or structure; any substandard housing or dwelling; and any unused service station.

Once the enforcement agency discovers one of these nuisances, § 7-15-3330 authorizes it to abate the nuisance administratively under this Chapter, determine and collect an administrative civil penalty under Chapter 23 of Part I of the Ordinance Code, seek relief directly from a court without first exhausting administrative procedures, or refer the violation to the District Attorney for criminal prosecution. Section 7-15-3340 lets the enforcement agency post a 'DANGER, UNSAFE TO OCCUPY, DO NOT ENTER' notice on each entrance of a substandard building once it is determined to be a nuisance; removing or defacing that posted notice without Resource Management Agency permission is itself an infraction, punishable under Section 125 of the Ordinance Code.

Article 29 of the same Chapter separately adopts the 1997 Uniform Code for the Abatement of Dangerous Buildings for structural-safety cases, with appeals routed to the Local Appeals Board under § 7-15-1050 rather than the Uniform Code's own appeals chapter, which the county did not adopt.