Bartholomew County, IN Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

C. 36-7-8-4, splits rodent-control duty between occupant and owner. 100, an occupant of a dwelling with a single unit is responsible for exterminating any insects, rodents or other pests on the premises. In a multi-unit dwelling, each occupant covers extermination only while their own unit is the sole one infested. Responsibility shifts to the owner in two situations: whenever the infestation traces to the owner's failure to keep the dwelling rat-proof or reasonably insect-proof, and whenever two or more units, or the building's shared or public areas, are infested at once.

098 backs this up by requiring every occupant to dispose of garbage and other organic waste that 'might provide food for rodents' in a clean, sanitary manner approved by the Health Officer, with owners responsible for supplying adequate disposal facilities in multi-unit buildings. The Bartholomew County Health Department, through the Health Officer, is the enforcing agency for the chapter and can order abatement of unsanitary or infested conditions; unresolved orders can escalate to the Health Board and, ultimately, to a court injunction. Because the export in this record does not include the county zoning ordinance (Chapter 157 adopts county zoning regulations by reference), this page covers only the housing-code extermination duty; it does not address vector-abatement provisions found elsewhere in the code.

Property owners renting units in the unincorporated county should treat rat-proofing, not just after-the-fact extermination, as the compliance baseline, since the code makes owner liability turn on whether the structure was kept rodent-proof in the first place.