Your Right to Habitable Housing in New York

Every residential lease in New York, written or oral, includes a warranty of habitability under Real Property Law (RPL) section 235-b: the landlord promises that your apartment and the areas you share with other tenants are fit to live in and free of conditions dangerous to your life, health, or safety, and no lease clause can waive that promise. If the landlord knew or should have known about a problem and did not fix it, a court can reduce your rent for the whole time the condition lasted, going back up to six years. In New York City, a 311 complaint can lead to an inspection by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and a violation that carries a legal repair deadline.

What the warranty covers

RPL 235-b is New York's version of the implied warranty of habitability, one of the basic rights every tenant has, and it applies to residential tenants in every part of the state. The court system's checklist for tenants raising the warranty in a nonpayment case includes:

• No heat, no hot water, or no water
• Leaks, flooding, or mold
• Mice, rats, roaches, or other pests
• A broken stove, refrigerator, sink, toilet, or shower
• Holes in floors, cracked walls or ceilings, or peeling paint or plaster
• A missing or broken smoke or carbon monoxide detector
• Broken door locks, intercoms, elevators, or hallway lights

The warranty also covers services the landlord promised when you moved in, such as air conditioning, even when no law requires them. Heat season dates and minimum temperatures for New York City are in New York heat and hot water rules.

The warranty has three limits:

• It does not cover a condition caused by you, your household, or people under your control.
• The landlord must have had notice. A call, text, or letter to the landlord or the super counts, and so does an HPD violation. A court can also find notice when the problem was obvious or routine maintenance should have caught it.
• If you do not let the landlord in to make repairs, a court can deny or sharply limit your rent reduction.

How to report a problem in New York City

1. Tell the landlord or managing agent first, in writing if you can, and keep a copy. HPD asks tenants to contact the owner before filing a complaint.
2. File with 311 by phone, on 311ONLINE, or in the 311MOBILE app. You get a Service Request number for tracking the complaint.
3. HPD tells the managing agent about the complaint, then calls you. If you say the condition is fixed, HPD closes the complaint. If it is not fixed, or HPD cannot reach you, HPD sends an inspector, and the owner is not told the inspection date.
4. If the inspector finds a violation, HPD sends the owner a Notice of Violation. The deadline to correct it depends on its class:

When the owner certifies to HPD that a violation is fixed, you get a notice by mail. If the repair was not made, challenge the certification: a reinspection that finds the condition keeps the violation open, while a certified violation that is never reinspected closes after 70 days. Lead-based paint violations are the exception and do not close automatically. When an owner does not fix an immediately hazardous condition, HPD's Emergency Repair Program may make certain repairs itself and bill the owner.

If violations stay open, you or a group of tenants in a privately owned building can bring an HP action, a Housing Court case that asks a judge to order repairs. Court staff help you prepare the papers, you serve them on both the owner and HPD, and you can request an HPD inspection before the court date. If the judge finds violations, the judge can order the owner to fix them by a set date, and if the owner misses it, you can return to court to ask for fines against the owner or a finding of contempt. To get money back for the months you lived with the problem, use one of the abatement routes below.

Outside New York City, report conditions to your city, town, or village code enforcement or building department. If that office does not respond, the Attorney General's office says you can file a complaint with the state Department of State's building codes division.

How to get a rent abatement

An abatement is a court-ordered cut in rent for the period a condition went unrepaired. The judge sets it as the percentage by which the problem reduced the value of your apartment, and you do not need an expert witness to prove your claim. You can ask for one in two ways:

1. Defense and counterclaim in a nonpayment case. If the landlord sues for rent, raise the conditions in your answer as a defense and as a counterclaim, meaning a claim of your own against the landlord in the same case. The abatement is not limited to the months the landlord is suing over; it can cover the entire time the condition existed, up to six years, and if it is larger than the rent you owe, the court can award you a refund.
2. Your own lawsuit. If you paid full rent while the problem lasted, you can sue the landlord for the overpayment. Small claims court in New York City hears claims up to $10,000.

While a nonpayment case is pending, RPAPL section 755 lets the court pause it if a city or local housing agency has issued a violation or order for a condition that is dangerous to life, health, or safety or that keeps you from using part of the apartment, or if you prove such a condition in court. To get the pause, you deposit the rent then due with the court clerk and keep depositing each month's rent within five days of its due date. The court can release deposited money to pay for repairs, and whatever remains goes to the landlord when the pause ends, so a stay protects you from eviction while repairs happen but does not by itself lower your rent.

Example: your rent is $2,000 a month, and a roof leak made the bedroom unusable for four months. If the judge finds the leak cut the apartment's value by 25%, the abatement is $2,000 x 25% x 4 months = $2,000.

The court's fact sheet tells tenants to bring copies of their letters to the landlord and proof the landlord received them, photos, temperature logs for heat problems, and neighbors who saw the conditions. HPD violations on the apartment or building also prove the landlord had notice.

Rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments

If your apartment is rent stabilized or rent controlled, you can also ask NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) to reduce your rent for decreased services. HCR recommends, but does not require, writing to the owner first; keep a copy of the letter to attach to your complaint. Use form RA-81 for a problem in your apartment, HHW-1 for no heat or hot water in your apartment (it must include a report from the city, county, or local agency that found the problem), or RA-84 for a building-wide problem. Complaints about your own apartment can also be filed online through HCR's Rent Connect. For a rent-stabilized apartment, HCR lowers the legal rent to the level before the most recent guideline increase, and no rent increase is allowed until HCR issues a restoration order. If a court later awards you an abatement for a problem HCR also addressed, it subtracts the rent reduction HCR gave you for that problem, counted from the date HCR's order took effect.

Can you withhold rent in New York?

Yes, but the Attorney General's office warns that the landlord may respond by suing you for nonpayment, and the judge then decides how much of the rent the conditions excuse. If the abatement turns out smaller than what you held back, you owe the difference, so keep the withheld rent in a separate account until the case ends. Once the landlord sues, you can ask for the RPAPL 755 stay described above and pay the rent to the court clerk instead. Can you legally withhold rent? covers the general risks.

Protection from retaliation

RPL 223-b bars a landlord from serving a notice to quit (a written demand that you move out), filing an eviction case, or substantially changing your tenancy because you:

• made a good-faith complaint to the landlord, the landlord's agent, or a government agency about a health, safety, habitability, or repair violation;
• took good-faith action to enforce your rights under the lease or the warranty of habitability; or
• took part in a tenants' organization.

Refusing to renew your lease, or offering a renewal with an unreasonable rent increase, counts as substantially changing the tenancy, though the law does not require a renewal term longer than one year. If the landlord acts within one year after your complaint or action, or within one year after an inspection, order, or other official action that resulted from it, the court presumes retaliation, and the landlord must prove it had a non-retaliatory reason. Raise retaliation as a defense in your answer. If the court finds it, you win the eviction case, though you still owe rent that is otherwise due, and you can also sue for damages and attorney's fees. A lease clause that charges a fee for filing a good-faith complaint is void.

The protection does not apply in owner-occupied buildings with fewer than four units, or when the condition you complained about was caused by you, a household member, or a guest. Retaliation protections for tenants explains the general rules, and New York eviction protections covers the rest of the eviction process.