How Often Do Heat Complaints Turn Into HPD Violations?

New Yorkers filed 358,903 heat and hot water complaints with HPD in the 12 months to October 1, 2026, and HPD issued a violation on 16,004 of them. That is 4.5 violations per 100 complaints, the lowest rate of any housing complaint category the city records. Once an inspector reaches a verdict, 34.8% of heat complaints produce a violation, against 39.8% across all housing complaints.

Both numbers hold. Only 46,011 heat complaints, 12.8% of those filed, ever reached a verdict, against 55.3% of paint and plaster complaints. Four mechanics close the other 87.2% before an inspector writes anything down.

The Measurement Window and What the Filter Captures

Every figure comes from the city's 311 service request file, queried on October 2, 2026 and filtered to HPD requests created between October 1, 2025 and October 1, 2026. Monthly and daily figures reach back to October 1, 2024, so two heat seasons are in view. HPD backfills records for weeks, so a total for a fixed window rises every time anyone runs it.

The heat and hot water category in 311 splits two ways inside the file. Its primary descriptor records scope: entire building or apartment only. A second column, descriptor_2, records which service failed, and that one separates heat from hot water. The 4.5 per 100 above, 4.46 precisely, covers the combined category, which is how it reconciles with our earlier citywide measurement, and the split beneath it runs wider.

This descriptor query returned 20 fewer records than the separate headline pull as the 311 file was backfilled on October 2. Every other figure here uses the combined category unless it says otherwise.

Violations per 100 complaints filed uses every complaint as the denominator. Conversion once decided counts only complaints where an inspector recorded a verdict: a violation, no violation, or no violation because it was too warm outside. Duplicates, telephone closures, access failures and open complaints sit outside both, with 32,053 recorded as conducted or attempted and no result.

Reconciling With the Citywide Figure

We published the citywide conversion rate across all housing complaints in September, over the year to September 22, 2026: 39.8% of decided complaints and 14.1% of everything filed, with heat at 4.5 per 100. Re-running that window on October 2 returns 16,031 violations from 358,072 heat complaints, 4.48 per 100 and 34.9% once decided.

The Comptroller, working from HPD's own complaint file rather than 311, put heat conversion at about 3% across 2017 to 2024, peaking at 4.5% in 2023. Our rate sits at that peak, not the eight-year average.

The Fate of 358,903 Heat Complaints

HPD records a closure reason for every complaint, and the reasons sort into eight groups.

The duplicate line belongs to heat alone. HPD closed 121,433 complaints citywide as duplicates of a building-wide condition, and 110,605 of them, 91.1%, were heat. Unsanitary conditions, paint, water leaks, flooring and doors record none. Several tenants calling about the same boiler produce one live complaint, and HPD closes the rest against it.

A heat or hot water violation is immediately hazardous, class C, with no grace period, carrying penalties of $350 to $1,250 a day and $500 to $1,500 for a subsequent violation, plus a $200 inspection fee from the third such inspection in a season.

Access and the Inspections HPD Loses

An inspector cannot write a heat violation from the sidewalk. Somebody has to open a door and let them take a reading, and that is where the category loses most of the inspections HPD attempts. Of the 86,127 heat complaints where HPD recorded a verdict or a failure to get in, 46.6% failed on access, and no other category comes close.

Read the elevator row against the heat row. An elevator sits in a common area, so an inspector reaches it unaided, and 83.8% of elevator complaints end with a verdict. Heat lives behind a locked apartment door, and 12.8% do. The Comptroller found access closures rising from 13% to 17% between 2017 to 2021 and 2022 to 2024.

Two details decide whether you land in the 46.6%. HPD states that an anonymous heat complaint leaves the inspector to pick an apartment at random. The inspector arrives without an appointment, leaves a card if nobody answers, and tries another apartment. That rule cuts both ways, because 1,918 heat violations last year followed an inspection of a neighbor's apartment after HPD could not get into the complaining tenant's.

The Fifty-Five Degree Trigger

Section 27-2029 of the Housing Maintenance Code sets the heat season duty that began on October 1. Between 6am and 10pm the owner must hold at least 68 degrees inside "whenever the outside temperature falls below fifty-five degrees". Between 10pm and 6am the floor is 62 degrees with no outside condition at all.

HPD reads that clause as a limit on its own power: "a violation can only be issued at times when the Inspector records the outside temperature at the time of the inspection to be below 55." A boiler can be stone cold on a 60 degree October afternoon and the inspection produces nothing.

HPD began recording that closure separately in the 2025-26 season, which makes the trigger measurable for the first time. The code appears 6,038 times in 2025-26 and 7 times across the whole of 2024-25.

In October 2025, 2,720 of the 4,925 heat complaints HPD decided closed because it was warmer than 55 degrees outside when the inspector took the reading. That is 55.2% of every verdict in the month, and May 2026 ran higher at 57.3%. Central Park recorded one day in October 2025 whose high stayed below 55 degrees, against 31 in January 2026.

The off-season proves the point from the other direction. No heat duty exists between June and September, leaving only the hot water minimum, which carries no temperature condition. Those complaints converted at 7.8 violations per 100 in summer 2026 and 10.6 in summer 2025, against 4.3 in the 2025-26 season.

The descriptor_2 split tests that claim inside one window. Heat alone converts at 3.70 violations per 100 filed against 6.75 for hot water alone, and once an inspector records a verdict the gap widens to 27.7% against 46.8%. Access failures sit at 46.4% and 47.5%, so access taxes the whole category rather than heat in particular. The extra loss comes after the inspector gets inside: 58.1% of decided heat complaints were found not to violate the housing laws, against 39.1% of hot water complaints. HPD applied the above-55 closure to 1,103 complaints logged as hot water alone, so its codes and the descriptor do not line up exactly.

Cold Snap Timing and Inspector Capacity

Heat complaints arrive when it is coldest, which is when HPD has the least room. Across the 486 days of the two heat seasons, the daily low temperature and complaint volume correlate at minus 0.82, and volume against violations per 100 at minus 0.41.

Sorted into five groups by volume, the quietest fifth of those days produced 8.88 violations per 100 and the busiest fifth 4.31, with the duplicate share moving in step from 19.7% to 32.3%.

February 8, 2026 was the busiest day of either season. Tenants filed 6,118 heat complaints, HPD issued 125 violations, 41.3% closed as duplicates and 6.8% reached a verdict. HPD's own count is 6,144, within 0.4% of ours.

Season totals say the same at a larger scale. Re-run on October 2, the 2025-26 season holds 341,824 heat complaints against 280,427 in 2024-25, a rise of 21.9%, and HPD's published counts, 344,437 and 282,606, land within 0.8% of ours. Violations per 100 filed fell from 4.89 to 4.29 as volume climbed.

Heat That Comes Back Before Anyone Arrives

115,843 heat complaints, 32.3% of the file, closed because somebody confirmed the condition had been fixed. 57,859 closed when an occupant told the inspector or the caller that heat and hot water were back, 29,397 after a phone call reported the correction, and 28,587 after HPD reached a tenant who verified it.

Those closures are the system working. The Comptroller describes the sequence: an automated call tells the owner to restore heat, HPD telephones the tenant to ask whether it came back, and the complaint closes if the answer is yes. A landlord who relights the boiler has met the duty.

The same mechanism punishes a different tenant. Some owners raise the heat for the inspection and let it drop afterward, which the Comptroller lists among the reasons conversion stays low. Nothing in the data separates a lasting repair from a temporary one.

The Parts You Control

Three of the four mechanics respond to what you do, starting with your name. HPD sends the inspector to a random apartment on an anonymous complaint, and a complaint filed in your own name points them at the unit you can open. Answer the callback, and if the apartment is still cold, say so, because a yes closes the complaint.

Report your own apartment rather than the building. Complaints logged as apartment only produced 7.78 violations per 100 filed last year against 2.74 for entire building, partly because building-wide reports close as duplicates 33.8% of the time against 25.1%. Read that as a pattern in how HPD routes the two rather than proof that wording decides the outcome, since entire-building reports come from large buildings with many callers.

Watch the thermometer and the clock. The daytime duty bites only below 55 degrees outside, so an October or April complaint on a mild afternoon has a weak case even with a dead boiler. The overnight 62 degree floor carries no outside condition, which makes a cold night the strongest ground you have. Complaints filed between 9am and 6pm produced 4.94 violations per 100 against 2.58 for those filed between midnight and 6am, because the inspector comes during working hours whatever time you called.

Keep your own record. A heat log of dated indoor readings is evidence a tenant brings to an HP action. If the violation does issue and your apartment is rent regulated, that report also unlocks a state rent reduction: the application needs a city agency report finding the lack, on form HHW-1 for one apartment or RA-84 for a building, where every other condition needs a certified letter and a wait first.

Before you call, read the building's own heat complaints and open violations. A building with forty heat complaints and no violations last winter differs from one with six and four violations, and the complaint and violation record shows which you have.

The Buildings HPD Inspects Without a Complaint

Section 27-2033.1 puts 50 class A multiple dwellings a year under temperature sensors, selected on their heat violations over the preceding two years and on whether HPD got heat complaints from more than one unit. HPD inspects each one at least twice a month through heat season without waiting for a call, and a building stays in for up to four years.

The sensors read indoor air at least hourly and hold 90 days of readings the tenant can see, and a tenant may refuse one. That design removes access, timing and self-resolution at once, which is why the Comptroller measured a 46% average fall in heat complaints at those buildings across the 2022 to 2024 seasons. Fifty buildings a year against 342,000 complaints is narrow.

Frequently Asked Questions

These answers use the same window and measure as the tables above.

How often does a heat complaint become an HPD violation?

HPD issued a violation on 16,004 of the 358,903 heat and hot water complaints filed in the year to October 1, 2026, which is 4.5 per 100. Against only the 46,011 complaints where an inspector recorded a verdict, the rate is 34.8%. Complaints naming heat alone convert at 3.70 per 100 and those naming hot water alone at 6.75.

Why did HPD close my heat complaint without a violation?

The four common reasons, in order of size: HPD treated it as a duplicate of a neighbor's report about the same boiler, an occupant said the heat was back, nobody was home to let the inspector in, or it was above 55 degrees outside when the reading was taken. Those four cover 59.8% of complaints filed.

Can HPD issue a heat violation when it is warm outside?

Not during the day. Section 27-2029 requires 68 degrees inside between 6am and 10pm only when the outside temperature falls below 55 degrees, and HPD issues a violation only when the inspector records an outdoor reading below 55. The overnight standard of 62 degrees applies whatever the weather. In October 2025, 55.2% of decided heat complaints closed on the daytime trigger.

Does calling 311 about no heat do anything?

It creates a dated record whether or not a violation follows, and that record supports a housing court case later. It also starts the automated call to the owner, one reason 32.3% of heat complaints close with somebody confirming the heat came back. The Comptroller measured a 62% fall in a building's heat complaints the season after a violation.

How long does HPD take to inspect a heat complaint?

No city page or code section sets an inspection deadline for heat. The clock attached to a heat violation is the owner's deadline to correct it, and HPD allows no time at all on heat and hot water rather than the 24 hours other immediately hazardous violations get. HPD telephones first and sends an inspector if the tenant says the heat is still off. Tenants cannot schedule the visit.

Should I file a heat complaint anonymously?

Filing anonymously makes the inspection less predictable. HPD states that on an anonymous complaint the inspector picks an apartment at random, so the unit you can open may never be the one knocked on. Real Property Law 223-b creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation if an owner moves against your tenancy within a year of a good faith complaint to a government agency.