Johnston County, NC Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Section 5-66, part of the county's minimum housing code in Chapter 5, sets the standard for rodent and pest control in every dwelling. Its rodent-control clause requires every basement or cellar window used or intended for ventilation, and every other opening into a basement that could let rodents in, to be fitted with screens or other approved devices, kept in a condition that effectively prevents rodents from entering. Its infestation clause makes every occupant of a dwelling, or an individual dwelling unit, responsible for exterminating any insects, rodents or other pests found in that dwelling, unit or on the surrounding premises. That responsibility shifts to the owner, though, whenever infestation is caused by failure of the owner to maintain a dwelling in a rodentproof or reasonable insectproof condition: if the entry point is a structural gap the landlord failed to seal, extermination becomes the owner's obligation rather than the tenant's.

Related structural sections reinforce the rodent standard: § 5-62(1) bars holes or cracks in structural members that admit rodents, and § 5-65 requires exterior foundations, walls, roofs, floors, windows and doors to be substantially rodentproof and kept in sound repair. Together these sections give a tenant or the county's code official a concrete basis for a rodent complaint: an unscreened basement opening or an unsealed structural gap is itself a code violation independent of whether rodents have actually been observed.