St. Tammany Parish, LA Property Maintenance: Vacant Lot Maintenance (2026)

Section 26-2(2) declares it a nuisance to maintain, place, or permit "accumulation of rubbish, trash, refuse, junk discarded or abandoned major appliances" such as refrigerators, freezers, or ranges, along with scrap metal, tin, lumber, or other discarded materials, on any vacant lot or on any occupied lot, neutral ground, street, sidewalk, drainageway, or public or private right-of-way. Enforcement runs through the same chapter 26 machinery used for every parish nuisance: section 26-4 authorizes the sheriff, constables, planning and permits enforcement officers, the parish health officer, and fire protection district chiefs to issue a written notice to abate once the condition is confirmed.

That notice must, per section 26-5, describe the debris, its location, the corrective action required, and a reasonable deadline, and it must warn that the parish will clean the lot itself and bill the owner if nothing is done. If the owner still fails to act, section 26-7 lets the parish or its contractor remove the debris, and section 26-8 converts the cost into a lien against the vacant lot, recorded and bearing interest at the legal rate until it is paid off. Because this is parish, not municipal, code, it governs only unincorporated land; a vacant lot inside Slidell, Mandeville, Covington, Madisonville, Abita Springs, or Pearl River falls under that city's own ordinances instead.

Enforcement is prosecuted in the parish's justice of the peace courts under section 26-12, with the Ward 8 and Ward 9 exceptions routed to Slidell City Court.