No heat or hot water in your NYC apartment.

NYC HOUSING MAINTENANCE CODE · RPL § 235-b

The NYC heat and hot water rules.

New York City's Housing Maintenance Code sets the heat obligation by calendar and thermometer. Heat season runs from October 1 through May 31. During that period:

• Daytime, 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.: when the outdoor temperature falls below 55°F, the landlord must keep the inside of the apartment at least 68°F.
• Overnight, 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.: the inside temperature must be at least 62°F regardless of how cold it is outside.

Hot water is different: it is owed every day of the year, 24 hours a day, at a minimum of 120°F at the tap. There is no hot water season.

These are building-owner obligations in any multiple dwelling and in most smaller rental buildings where the landlord controls the heating system. They are not negotiable by lease, and they are independent of whether you pay for heat separately; a landlord who has given you control of your own thermostat and a working system has met the obligation, but one who controls a boiler that does not deliver the minimum has not.

Layered on top of the code is the statewide warranty of habitability in Real Property Law § 235-b, which every New York lease carries and no lease can waive. Lack of heat or hot water is the textbook example of a condition "detrimental to life, health or safety," and it supports a rent abatement for every day it persists. The broader framework is on our landlord repairs hub.

First: call 311. Then write it down.

For heat and hot water, 311 comes first, ahead of any letter, because it is the fastest route to an inspection. Call 311 or file online at any hour; heat complaints are prioritized during heat season and HPD inspectors work nights and weekends. When you file, you will get a complaint number. Write it down and keep every one; a string of complaint numbers over a winter is its own kind of evidence.

Before the inspector arrives, take your own readings. A ten-dollar thermometer placed away from windows and radiators, photographed next to your phone's clock and a weather app showing the outdoor temperature, establishes the violation even if the heat happens to come on for the inspection. Log the date, time, indoor reading, and outdoor reading. A handwritten log kept daily is admissible and persuasive.

Send your landlord a written notice the same day you call 311: the date, the lack of heat or hot water, your readings, your 311 complaint number, and a demand that service be restored immediately. Email is fine. The goal is a paper trail that shows the landlord knew, from a specific date, and what the landlord did about it.

What happens after the HPD inspection.

If the inspector confirms the condition, HPD issues a violation. Heat and hot water violations are classified as immediately hazardous, the most serious class, and carry the shortest correction deadline, typically measured in hours or a single day rather than weeks. The violation is posted on HPD's public building-information site, where anyone, including a Housing Court judge or a prospective buyer of the building, can see it.

If the landlord still does not restore service, HPD can send its own contractor to make the repair under its emergency repair program and bill the owner, with the cost becoming a lien against the building. HPD can also seek civil penalties against the owner in Housing Court, and those penalties for heat violations are set per day and escalate for repeat offenders within the same heat season.

What HPD does not do is pay you back. The violation establishes the breach; it does not compensate you for the weeks you ran space heaters and boiled water on the stove. That money is a rent abatement, and you have to claim it. See how rent abatement works and the comparison at HPD complaint vs. demand letter.

How much is a no-heat abatement worth?

Courts set abatements as a percentage of rent for the period of breach, scaled to how badly the condition impaired the apartment. Heat and hot water outages tend toward the higher end because they affect every room and every hour. A total loss of heat in January can support a substantial abatement; an intermittent outage, or a system that reaches 64°F instead of 68°F, supports less.

A concrete example: rent of $2,800 a month, no heat for three weeks in February, confirmed by two HPD violations and a daily log. An abatement in the range of 30 to 50 percent for those three weeks would be roughly $600 to $1,000. Add a second outage in March and the figure compounds. Over a bad winter, a tenant with good records can have a four-figure claim, and a building with eight affected units has a landlord looking at a number that gets attention.

These are illustrations, not predictions. Judges have wide discretion, and the strength of your log and the landlord's response history move the percentage more than anything else.

What an attorney demand letter does here.

By the time tenants reach us, they usually have the violations and the log and no money. The letter turns those into a demand. It recites the notice history and each HPD complaint and violation number, states the indoor readings, cites RPL § 235-b and the Housing Maintenance Code heat requirements, and demands two things by a date certain: a permanent fix to the system, with an explanation of what is being done to the boiler rather than another reset, and a specific abatement credited against rent for the period already documented. It closes by stating that the tenant will file an HP action and pursue the abatement in court if the deadline passes.

That framing works on the people who can actually authorize a check: the owner or the management company's counsel. A super cannot grant a rent credit; a lawyer reviewing a letter that lists four immediately hazardous violations can see where the case is going, and a credit against next month's rent is cheaper than defending it. We send these for a flat fee through DemandLetterNY; the general approach is described at flat-fee demand letters.

Where a letter is the wrong tool: if you have no heat right now, a letter will not warm the apartment tonight; 311 and HPD's emergency repair program will. If the building is in receivership or the owner has disappeared, a 7-A proceeding or HP action is the mechanism that gets a judge to compel a fix. And if the landlord is already making a good-faith repair and the outage was a single day, an abatement demand is likely not worth the friction.

Do not withhold rent to make a point.

The instinct when the radiators go cold is to stop paying. Resist it, or at least do not do it without advice. Withholding rent lets the landlord choose the forum and the timing: a nonpayment proceeding in Housing Court where you are the respondent, where you will typically be required to deposit rent as the case proceeds, and where a bad outcome is an eviction judgment. The better path keeps you paying, builds the record, and claims the abatement affirmatively. If you do withhold, put every dollar in a separate account so it can be produced instantly.

Also know that Real Property Law § 223-b protects you from retaliation for 311 complaints and for enforcing your rights under the warranty of habitability. A no-heat complaint history is not something a landlord can lawfully punish.

If the problem is bigger than heat.

Boiler failures rarely travel alone. Buildings with no heat often have water leaks from burst pipes, mold from the damp, and deferred maintenance elsewhere. If that describes your building, read mold and leaks your landlord won't fix, and consider whether the tenants should act together; an HP action or a demand letter on behalf of several tenants is substantially more expensive for a landlord to ignore than one. Outside the five boroughs, the code enforcement process differs; see landlord repairs outside NYC.