Kalamazoo, MI Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Section 17-48 adopts the International Property Maintenance Code as Kalamazoo's residential property-maintenance standard and layers additional City-specific requirements onto it, including subsection A(6), Infestation. That subsection splits responsibility for extermination three ways. In any duplex or multiunit building, or in the shared or public parts of any building, the owner is always responsible for extermination when insects, rodents or other pests infest the property. In a single-family dwelling, the owner is responsible if the current occupant has lived there less than 30 days, on the theory that a new tenant shouldn't inherit an existing infestation problem.

Once an occupant has been in a single-family unit more than 30 days, responsibility for extermination shifts to the tenant, though the owner remains on the hook for any physical improvements needed to keep pests from getting in, such as sealing gaps, holes or damaged screens. Chapter 17 also requires operable window screens in rental units between April 15 and October 31 each year, § 17-48A(8), which limits how pests enter in warmer months, and § 17-48A(5) requires basement storage areas to be regularly inspected and treated for rodents and insects when items are subject to moisture damage.

Enforcement runs through §§ 17-22 and 17-23: a criminal-provision violation is a misdemeanor, while a civil-penalty violation is a municipal civil infraction with a minimum $150 fine for a first offense, rising to a minimum $250 if a second violation at the same property occurs within two years, and each week a violation continues is treated as a separate offense.