Warrick County, IN Property Maintenance: Property Blight (2026)

Chapter 156 of the Warrick County Code does not restate Indiana's unsafe-building procedure; it adopts I.C. 36-7-9 wholesale by reference in § 156.02(A), so the notice, hearing, order and demolition sequence a Warrick County owner faces is the state Unsafe Building Law applied through county staff. Section 156.01 assigns the roles: the Building Department of Warrick County is the ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY, the Area Plan Commission is the HEARING AUTHORITY, and the terms SUBSTANTIAL PROPERTY INTEREST and UNSAFE BUILDINGS/UNSAFE PREMISES carry the definitions printed at I.C.

36-7-9-2 and 36-7-9-4. Under § 156.02(B), the Building Department is responsible for administering the chapter, meaning it is the department a resident contacts to report a dangerous structure or check an open case. Section 156.03 creates a separate Unsafe Building Fund, financed to carry out the purposes of this chapter, which typically covers the county's expense inspecting, boarding or ultimately demolishing a structure the owner will not repair. Because the substantive standards, notice periods and appeal rights live in I.C. 36-7-9 itself rather than in the county's own text, an owner facing a case should expect the state statute's hearing and order-of-demolition framework, administered locally by the Building Department and Area Plan Commission rather than a county-drafted alternative.

This chapter governs only unincorporated Warrick County; Boonville, Newburgh and Chandler enforce building safety under their own municipal codes, not this county chapter. Ordinance 2006-08, passed June 28, 2006, remains the operative adoption and has not been superseded in the current code.