https://www.amazon.com/Common-Sense-Pest-Control-Least-Toxic...
Sounds like what you're looking for. I've used its recommendations in the house I built, with good results. (For example, instead of foam I used a metal sill plate, which prevents insects from coming up through cracks in the foundation into the wood structure.)
The contractor groused about it, because he wasn't used to doing things that way. But he got excited about it after a while, and on his own fabricated stainless steel inserts that the windows would fit into that would prevent any leaks and rot around the windows. He was pretty proud of his work :-)
Another thing the book recommended was putting ground glass into the concrete mix, as rats won't chew it. But I didn't go that far.
The main thing is to make sure any gaps and vents have wire screens. Mice can get in where the plumbing enters the house, you can stop that by ramming steel wool between the pipe and the house.
Traps and poison are inhumane, cruel, and just bad karma, and usually come back to bite us somehow.
I think the solution is to tolerate and even appreciate the rats, and learn to share space with them.
Drown traps (using any number of mechanisms to dunk rodents into a bucket of water from which they cannot escape) might be a bit rough ethically though I think much better than glue traps. Additionally they're many times more effective, fully re-usable, and you can make them basically for free with a few scraps laying around in your garage. One method that works well on mice and other small rodents (though not so much on norway rats which are incredibly clever) is as simple as floating a layer of seeds on top of the water. The rodents jump in to get the seeds, not realizing that the seeds were floating on water. A bag of bird seed, a bucket and some water are all you need for that sort of trap and although death isn't instant, it's a lot faster than with a glue trap.
I'll have to look into if there have been studies on more systemic approaches to managing animal populations. Things like changing how/where food waste is stored.
Would you oppose lethal approaches to rodent control if they were more limited and directed? For example, a warehouse getting a cat or setting out some mouse traps.