NEW YORK, NY — The City released a housing enforcement plan Thursday promising tougher action against unsafe apartments, repeat violations and unresolved tenant complaints.
Altovise, who has lived in her Harlem apartment for more than 20 years ,told Patch in February that she slept in her coat after her heat repeatedly failed last winter.
At one point, she said, the water stopped running entirely.
Five months later, Altovise said her landlords respond timely to repairs, but she faces a new battle: disputed charges.
She said she received fees for problems she believed resulted from building failures, including water leaks, appliance damage and repairs.
“Every time it breaks down, or I come home with a puddle of water in the floor, of course that makes the tile on the floor buckle,” Altovise told Patch on Thursday. “So that’s $100.”
She said a refrigerator repair brought another charge.
“That’s another $100,” she said.
When the sink backed up, she said another fee appeared.
Altovise said the charges eventually grew into thousands of dollars, including fees she disputes from before the current ownership took over the building.
A lawyer who reviewed the charges told her she did not owe them, she said.
She said the dispute continued after a court case was dismissed before a hearing, while legal fees remained on her account.
Her experience echoes the challenge behind the City’s Rental Ripoff Hearings: tenants often say identifying a violation is only the beginning.
The larger fight is getting lasting repairs, avoiding new costs and holding someone accountable.
The city’s report, released Thursday after testimony from 2,419 New Yorkers, found that it receives more than 750,000 housing-related complaints each year involving unsafe conditions, delayed repairs, landlord harassment and deceptive fees.
The new plan from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration would overhaul how inspectors respond to complaints, increase penalties for landlords with repeated violations and create new ways for tenants to organize.
In New York City, landlords generally cannot charge tenants for repairs that are the landlord’s responsibility under housing laws.
Owners must maintain apartments and buildings in safe, habitable conditions, including repairing essential systems such as heat, hot water, plumbing and other building-wide problems.
A landlord may be able to charge a tenant for damage caused by the tenant’s own actions or negligence, or for certain fees that are allowed under a lease or law.
But tenants are not typically responsible for paying to fix ordinary wear and tear, aging equipment or conditions caused by building failures.
Housing advocates say disputed repair charges can become another source of conflict between renters and landlords, especially when tenants believe they are being billed for problems they did not create.
Renters who receive repair charges they believe are improper can request documentation, keep records of complaints and payments, and seek help through city tenant resources or legal assistance.
The legality of a charge depends on the specific circumstances, including the lease terms, the cause of the damage and whether the landlord had a legal duty to make the repair.
Housing experts said the changes address long-running problems, but enforcement remains the biggest challenge.
Allia Mohamed, co-founder of Openigloo, said inspections alone do not always lead to solutions.
“One of the biggest challenges is that even when inspections happen, enforcement often falls short,” Mohamed said.
She pointed to unpaid housing violation fines as one reason some landlords continue operating without resolving problems.
According to city data, New York City has accumulated more than $1 billion in unpaid housing violation fines, meaning landlords can face violations without always experiencing immediate financial consequences.
Mohamed said the City needs faster inspections and stronger follow-through, but she also said some buildings need major repairs rather than temporary fixes.
“Heat and hot water are also among the most common complaints we see from Openigloo renters,” she said. “Many of these issues occur in some of New York City’s oldest buildings, where resolving the underlying problem often requires significant capital investment — not simply another repair visit.”
The city report also highlighted concerns about landlord accountability and ownership transparency.
Many buildings are controlled through layers of limited liability companies, making it difficult for tenants to identify who owns a property or manages multiple buildings.
“Ownership transparency is fundamental to accountability,” Mohamed said.
She said the City could create a unique identifier for each owner that follows them across properties.
“That would dramatically improve transparency and make it easier for renters, policymakers and regulators to identify ownership patterns,” she said.
The City receives hundreds of thousands of housing complaints each year, with heat and hot water among the most common issues.
From fiscal years 2023 through 2025, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development received an average of 784,662 housing quality complaints annually, including reports of insufficient heat or hot water, rodents, mold, leaks and broken toilets.
Heat and hot water complaints made up 35 percent of reported housing maintenance issues over the last three years.
The City received more than 225,000 heat and hot water complaints each year since 2023, with complaints increasing during the winter of 2025-2026.
A city housing survey found 27 percent of occupied rentals experienced rodents, 18 percent had insufficient heating, 20 percent reported leaks and 10 percent had mold.
Landlord harassment was the most common issue recorded by the city’s Tenant Helpline.
Since 2020, the helpline received 16,122 calls involving harassment, representing 17 percent of calls with recorded topics.
Failure to make repairs was the second most common issue, appearing in 12,705 calls.
Mohamed said renters should document problems and seek support.
“Tenant harassment is a serious issue, and it’s already illegal under New York law,” she said.
She also encouraged tenants to work with neighbors.
“There’s strength in numbers,” she said.
For Altovise, some problems have improved.
She said she no longer sees rats around the building’s garbage area, and the heat and hot water problems were eventually repaired.
But her dispute over fees remains.
“We went from one problem to now legal programs” she said.
The City’s new plan aims to change how those battles are handled.
For renters facing unresolved problems, the next test will be whether enforcement leads to repairs that last— and whether tenants are left paying the price while they wait.
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