NYC Building Violations, by the Numbers
ViolationWatch's detection engine analyzes the full sweep of New York's building-compliance landscape — more than a billion data points across every agency, enriched with our own proprietary detection signals. The most comprehensive report on NYC building violations ever produced. One of a kind.
The headline story
Brooklyn is the violation capital
One borough holds 41% of every active DOB violation (238,419) — and leads ECB penalties with over $1 billion imposed. More than Manhattan and the Bronx combined.
Boilers are the #1 culprit
Boiler-related violations — low-pressure, high-pressure, and Local Law 62/91 — make up 58% of all active DOB violations. Heating equipment is the single biggest source of exposure citywide.
A quarter of fines go unpaid
Of the $3.10B in ECB penalties ever imposed, $805.7M is still outstanding — about 26 cents on every dollar, sitting uncollected.
Tens of millions of records, every agency
New York's enforcement footprint is staggering. Each circle is sized by the number of records on file — from 311's mountain of complaints down to DOT's sidewalk tickets.
21.3 million calls to 311
Before a condition becomes a violation, it almost always starts as a complaint. New Yorkers have filed 21,340,927 311 service requests — and 98% are already closed. The housing-condition calls are the single most valuable signal our engine watches.
Where 311 routes the complaint
HPD (housing) + DOB (buildings) take 4.9M building-related complaints between them.
Most-reported complaint types
Heat / Hot Water alone: 1,637,497 complaints — the #1 housing issue citywide.
NYC's heat-complaint season
311 heat & hot-water complaints don't spread evenly across the year — they swing with the thermostat. 351,737 land in Jan, against just 15,218 in Aug — a 23× winter spike. 96% of all heat complaints arrive inside the legal "heat season," October 1 to May 31.
The anatomy of NYC's active violations
Every active DOB violation in the city, by borough. The split is dramatically uneven — and the ECB penalty map looks almost identical.
Where the violations actually are
HPD housing violations cluster hard. Brooklyn and the Bronx alone carry 67% of them — and seven of the ten worst ZIP codes in the city are in the Bronx. Find yours.
HPD housing violations on record · darker = more
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See how your neighborhood ranks for HPD housing violations across NYC.
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The 12 ZIP codes with the most HPD violations
$3.1 billion imposed. Where did it go?
For every dollar the city has ever charged in ECB penalties, this is where it ended up — collected, reduced, or still owed.
Collection rate
Just 44¢ of every dollar imposed has actually been collected by the city.
Boiler share of DOB
58% of active DOB violations trace back to heating equipment and its filings.
Cooling-tower concentration
71% of NYC's 122,846 cooling towers — the Legionella risk — sit in Manhattan.
ECB penalties imposed, 2007–2025
Annual penalties peaked in 2019 at $221.0M, dipped through the pandemic, then jumped back up in 2025.
Boilers vs. construction
The everyday compliance grind and the big-ticket enforcement live in completely different categories.
337,582 active DOB boiler violations — low-pressure, high-pressure and LL62/91 filings. The relentless day-to-day of NYC compliance.
1,106,726 construction violations carry more outstanding penalty money than every other category combined — over half a billion dollars.
5,984 facades the city calls “Unsafe.”
Every building over six stories must have its facade inspected by an engineer every five years — the FISP / Local Law 11 program. Across 86,340 filings, only 51% come back outright Safe, and 5,984 are flagged Unsafe — the status behind sidewalk sheds and falling-debris risk.
A facade keeps the “Unsafe” label until repairs are finished and a re-inspection clears it — which is why scaffolding can stand for years. 58% of all facade filings are in Manhattan, where the tall-building stock concentrates.
Rats, boilers, and the road to court
A violation is only one signal. Our detection engine also reads inspection results, housing-court filings, and permit activity — the context that says a building is heading for trouble.
Of 3.1M DOHMH rodent inspections, 517,861 found active rat activity — about 17%.
Rat-belt — inspections by borough
Boiler inspections with defects
8% of 861K boiler inspection filings flagged a defect — the equipment behind the city’s #1 violation type.
Heat & hot-water lawsuits
Of 238,755 HPD housing-court cases, 60,452 are tenants suing for heat — plus 22,564 harassment cases.
DOB construction permits
571,242 new-building and 102,279 demolition permits — the construction churn that generates violations.
Notable findings
The single largest ECB fine
A "Quality of Life" violation — the category with the highest average fine, at $3,658.
Violations dismissed
About 16.3% — roughly 1 in 6 — get dismissed at the hearing. Showing up and fighting demonstrably works.
Unpaid from 2025 alone
Most outstanding fines are recent — older penalties get paid or written off, but one recent year can carry $180M+ uncollected.
The full data reference
The exhaustive cuts — what each violation type costs, how every dollar stands, and how hearings actually end. Cite any row.
ECB violations by type — volume, cost & outstanding
| Violation type | Count | Avg fine | Outstanding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality of Life | 69,897 | $3,658 | $107.6M |
| Cranes & Derricks | 10,313 | $2,900 | $3.6M |
| Signs | 25,622 | $2,541 | $5.5M |
| Construction | 1,106,726 | $1,925 | $580.4M |
| Site Safety | 34,087 | $1,604 | $8.0M |
| Local Law | 45,290 | $1,541 | $8.0M |
| Plumbing | 23,439 | $1,156 | $3.9M |
| Boilers | 65,761 | $726 | $8.7M |
| Zoning | 28,278 | $633 | $2.4M |
How ECB hearings end
HPD violations by class
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NYC compliance, decoded
The acronyms the city throws at building owners — what they actually mean.
- ECB violation
- An Environmental Control Board violation — a city summons (usually from DOB) that carries a monetary penalty and is adjudicated at OATH.
- OATH
- The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings — NYC's central tribunal where summonses from DOB, FDNY, sanitation and other agencies are heard.
- HPD violation class
- HPD grades housing violations A (non-hazardous), B (hazardous), C (immediately hazardous — no heat, no hot water, lead, mold) and I (informational). Class C must be cured fastest.
- DOB violation
- A Department of Buildings violation for work, equipment or conditions that break the building code — no permit, a failed inspection, or expired equipment.
- SWARMP
- "Safe With A Repair And Maintenance Program" — a facade status meaning the wall is safe for now but needs scheduled repairs before the next inspection cycle.
- FISP / Local Law 11
- The Facade Inspection & Safety Program — requires buildings over six stories to have their exterior walls inspected by an engineer every five years.
- Default judgment
- When a respondent doesn't appear at an OATH hearing, the city can impose the maximum penalty automatically. About 1 in 11 ECB cases ends this way.
- Stop Work Order
- A DOB order halting all construction at a site until a violation is resolved. Working through an SWO stacks additional penalties fast.
- Certificate of Occupancy
- The DOB document (C of O) certifying that a building is legally safe to occupy — and for exactly what use.
- Cure
- Fixing a violating condition within a set window. Many violations are dismissed or reduced if cured before the hearing date.
- Local Law 97
- The 2019 climate law that caps greenhouse-gas emissions for large buildings, with escalating fines that began in 2024.
- BIN
- Building Identification Number — the unique 7-digit ID the city uses to track every structure across all of its agencies.
Frequently asked
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How many HPD housing violations are there in NYC?
Which NYC borough has the most building violations?
What is the most common NYC building violation?
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Where does this NYC violation data come from?
Methodology
This report aggregates New York City's official building-compliance records across fourteen datasets, retrieved in June 2026: DOB Violations, DOB-ECB Violations, HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations, OATH Hearings Division Case Status, 311 Service Requests, DOB Complaints, DOT Sidewalk Violations, Cooling Tower Inspections, DOB NOW façade filings (FISP / Local Law 11), DOB NOW boiler-safety filings, HPD Housing Litigations, DOHMH Rodent Inspections, and DOB Permit Issuance. "Active" counts reflect current status at retrieval; penalty totals are cumulative across all ECB violations on file. A facade is "SWARMP" when it is safe with an ongoing repair program, and "Unsafe" until repairs are completed and re-inspected. Borough totals sum the five boroughs (a small share of records carry non-standard codes and are excluded). 2026 figures are excluded from the annual trend because the year is incomplete. FDNY fire-safety violations adjudicate through OATH. Numbers are point-in-time and shift as the city updates its records. The analysis is ViolationWatch's.
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