National Healthy Housing Standard

The Standard provides health-based provisions to fill gaps where no property maintenance policy exists and also a complement to the International Property Maintenance Code and other policies already in use by local and state governments and federal agencies for the upkeep of existing homes. The Standard bridges the health and building code communities by putting modern public health information into housing code parlance. The Standard is written in code language to ease its adoption, although we anticipate that states, localities, and other users will tailor it to local conditions. The Standard consists of seven chapters and a section of definitions. The annotated version of the Standard explains the public health rationale for each provision, and provides references and resources for more information. Individually and together, the Standard constitutes minimum performance standards for a safe and healthy home. In developing the Standard we found a variety of provisions that could be added to further enhance the health and safety of the home, but that would be difficult to achieve during property maintenance due to cost or feasibility. We have included those provisions as “stretch” measures for users who want to go above the minimum requirements or who can integrate compliance with the provisions during property renovation. We encourage the adoption of the stretch provisions wherever feasible.