Which NYC Neighborhoods Have the Most 311 Housing Complaints?

Highbridge in the Bronx draws more 311 housing complaints per apartment than any other New York City neighborhood we measure, at 870.5 per 1,000 apartments against a citywide 313. In the same 12 months, HPD inspected and recorded a verdict on 318,116 complaints across the city and issued a violation on 126,612 of them, a conversion rate of 39.8%.

Those two numbers answer different questions. A complaint rate measures how often tenants pick up the phone. A conversion rate measures what the city finds when they do. The same neighborhood can lead on one and sit mid-table on the other, and conversion runs from 26.6% in Lincoln Square to 51.4% in Ozone Park.

Data Sources and the Measurement Window

Every figure on this page comes from two city datasets, queried on September 26, 2026. Complaints are 311 service requests routed to HPD with a created date from September 22, 2025 to September 22, 2026: 898,328 of them. Apartments come from the city tax lot file, restricted to lots holding three or more apartments, which is 2,868,881 apartments across 172,485 lots.

The denominator is apartments, because a raw complaint count ranks neighborhoods by how many apartments they hold.

311 records carry a ZIP code rather than a neighborhood boundary, so each neighborhood rate below covers the ZIP codes holding that neighborhood's apartments. Those footprints run larger than the names suggest, twice as large as the neighborhood boundary at the median. The ZIP codes covering Lincoln Square hold 84,897 apartments against 45,266 inside the boundary itself, so read each rate as the area around a neighborhood rather than its exact outline. Our neighborhood housing data uses the same ZIP basis for its heat and rodent rates, measured on September 22, 2026, and our re-run matches those published rates to within one complaint per 1,000 in 104 of the 128 areas.

HPD and 311 keep adding records for weeks, so a total for a fixed past window rises every time you run it, and we re-ran every figure here rather than copying one. The date field matters as much as the window. We filtered on created date, so a complaint filed on September 20 and inspected in October sits outside these totals.

The Citywide Complaint Mix

Heat and hot water accounts for 39.9% of all HPD housing complaints, or 358,071 of the 898,328. Nothing else comes close. Unsanitary conditions takes 15.1%, plumbing 9.3% and paint or plaster 7.5%.

The rest of the file runs thin. Door or window sits at 5.9%, water leaks at 5.3%, general conditions at 4.8%, electrical at 3.9%, flooring or stairs at 3.4%, appliances at 2.9%, safety at 1.6%, elevators at 0.2% and outside-building complaints at 0.1%.

Unsanitary conditions covers more than its name suggests. Of its 135,979 complaints, 52.7% cite pests, 28.5% cite mold, 15.6% cite garbage or recycling storage and 3.2% cite sewage. Mold has no category of its own in 311, so those 38,740 mold complaints sit in a bucket most renters never think to open.

Our location file puts the citywide heat rate at 125.7 complaints per 1,000 apartments and rodent complaints at 8.8, both as of September 22, 2026. Heat leads the mix in 104 of the 106 neighborhood footprints we measure. Port Richmond and New Springville on Staten Island are the two exceptions, and in Port Richmond unsanitary conditions take 25.3% against heat's 22.1%. At the other end, heat takes 56.7% of the file in Whitestone and 55.6% in Turtle Bay. If you want heat complaints at one address rather than across a ZIP, the building record is the place to read them.

The Complaint to Violation Conversion Rate

Of the 898,328 complaints filed, HPD inspected and recorded a verdict on 318,116, which is 35.4% of them. Inspectors issued a violation on 126,612 and found no violation on 191,504. That is the 39.8% conversion rate, and it is the honest answer to whether calling works: two in five complaints that reach an inspector's judgment end with a written violation.

Measured against every complaint filed, the figure drops to 14.1%. The gap is the two thirds of complaints that never reach a verdict, and those reasons are worth knowing before you file.

The largest single reason is duplication. HPD closed 120,854 complaints, 13.5% of the file, as a duplicate of a building-wide condition another tenant had already reported. Access is the next problem: HPD could not complete the inspection on 108,335 and the inspector could not get into the apartment on 85,092 more. On 57,816 heat cases an occupant confirmed the heat had come back before the inspector arrived. Another 44,261 closed after a phone call in which someone said the condition had been fixed, and 39,953 conditions were still open when we counted.

A further 9,566 complaints ended with the inspector confirming the condition and finding a violation already on file. Those sit outside both sides of the rate.

Conversion Rate by Complaint Category

The category you report moves your odds over a wider range than the neighborhood you live in. Heat carries the volume and the worst outcome per call.

Heat generates two fifths of all complaints and 4.5 violations per 100 filed. The city's own auditors reached the same place from a different direction: the Comptroller's 2025 review of heat enforcement found that about 3% of heat complaints between 2017 and 2024 led inspectors to issue a violation, peaking at 4.5% in the 2023 heat season. Our re-run for the year to September 2026 lands on 4.5%.

Heat behaves this way because the condition moves. A boiler that failed at 6am can be running by the time an inspector knocks, and 57,816 heat complaints closed for exactly that reason. Another 6,062 closed because the outside temperature was above 55 degrees, which by law removes the basis for a heat violation.

Water leaks and flooring both convert at 48.3%, the best in the file. Paint and plaster produce the most violations per complaint filed at 25.8 per 100, ahead of flooring at 25.7 and water leaks at 25.0. Appliances convert at 21.0% and elevators at 8.0%, and an elevator complaint is the least likely of all to end in an HPD violation.

Neighborhoods With the Most Complaints per 1,000 Apartments

The second column measures how often residents call per apartment. The third measures the share of inspected complaints that become violations. Those rates need to be read together: a neighborhood can have a high call volume without every inspected complaint becoming a violation.

Eight of the ten sit above the citywide conversion rate of 39.8%, and University Heights reaches 45.7%. Tenants here call far more often than the city average and inspectors confirm a larger share of what they report, which rules out reading heavy volume as tenants who complain easily.

Neighborhoods With the Fewest Complaints

The quiet end of the list is Manhattan below 96th Street, with three exceptions. The spread from top to bottom is roughly 35 to 1.

Co-op City is the entry that breaks the pattern, and it breaks it in the direction a renter should care about. Its 1,019 complaints across 16,953 apartments in the ZIP-code footprint put it fifth from the bottom on volume, and its 43.1% conversion rate sits above the citywide 39.8% and above every Manhattan neighborhood on this table. The narrower neighborhood boundary used in some building analyses contains 15,783 apartments; these are different denominators. Tenants here call rarely and inspectors confirm the condition when they do.

The Spread in Conversion Rates

Across the 106 distinct neighborhood footprints we measure, the conversion rate runs from 26.6% to 51.4%, with a median of 38.5%. Ozone Park holds the top of that range and Lincoln Square the bottom.

Complaint volume and conversion move together, correlating at plus 0.55. Neighborhoods where tenants call most are the neighborhoods where inspectors confirm most, and the nine lowest conversion rates in the city all sit in Manhattan, where complaint volume is already low. Lincoln Square files 78.3 complaints per 1,000 apartments and HPD confirms 26.6% of the ones it rules on. Highbridge files eleven times as many per apartment and confirms 38.6%.

Borough rates follow the same line. The Bronx converts at 42.8% and Staten Island at 43.3%, Brooklyn at 39.4%, Queens at 38.2% and Manhattan at 36.1%.

A low neighborhood conversion rate does not prove that HPD applies a different standard there. Complaint categories, building conditions and whether inspectors can gain access can all affect the share that results in a violation. Working out a normal complaint count for one building means measuring it against its own neighborhood rather than the city.

Limits of a Complaint Rate

Conditions are not the only thing that moves a complaint rate, and three drivers pull hard enough to change a ranking.

Public housing sits almost entirely outside this HPD complaint extract. Not one 311 service request in the 12-month window is logged to NYCHA. Residents generally report repairs to NYCHA's Customer Contact Center and get a separate ticket. Some NYCHA buildings have private management: residents first report to that company and, if the condition persists, can file an Apartment Maintenance Complaint that enters HPD's stream. A neighborhood with a large public-housing development can therefore read quieter here than its conditions warrant.

Complaining also carries exposure. Under Real Property Law 223-b, a tenant who made a good faith complaint to a government agency gets a rebuttable presumption of retaliation if the owner serves a notice to quit, starts a case to recover the apartment or tries to substantially alter the tenancy within the following year, and the owner then has to establish a non-retaliatory motive by a preponderance of the evidence. That presumption operates inside a case an owner has already brought, which makes it a defense rather than a bar on the owner filing. Two tenants in identical apartments can therefore read the same decision about calling 311 differently, and the data cannot separate that from conditions.

The duplicate share cuts the other way. With 13.5% of complaints closing as duplicates of a building-wide condition, a complaint count partly measures how many neighbors called about the same boiler. A building with an organized tenant association can produce more complaints than an identical building next door where one person calls and the rest wait.

None of that makes the figures wrong, and none of it helps you judge one address. A neighborhood average covers hundreds of buildings that sit on both sides of it. Put the address into the building lookup and you get that building's own 311 complaints, HPD violations by class and status, registration and legal actions, DOB violations, complaints and permits, executed evictions, rodent inspections, bed bug reports and rent stabilization status. No login and no charge. If the record leaves a specific condition unresolved, an NYC building inspector can examine the property before you commit.

The Cooling Duty Arriving in the Complaint File

The mix above is shaped by winter, and that changes at the end of this decade. Local Law 23 of 2026 added section 27-2030 to the Housing Maintenance Code, defining a cooling season from June 15 to September 15 and setting adequate cooling at an indoor air temperature no greater than 78 degrees. From June 1, 2030, an owner has to keep a covered room equipped with cooling that can hold that temperature, and a covered room means the one a permanent occupant uses as a primary sleeping place.

The duty is opt-in. A tenant can make the election from March 1, 2028 and it takes effect 60 days later, and in a rent regulated apartment the tenant also has to consent to the improvements the owner needs to make and to the charges attached. Leases offered from that date have to say who pays the electricity for the cooling system and carry HPD's notice.

An owner who breaches those duties faces a class C immediately hazardous violation with 14 days to correct. Heat and hot water supplies four complaints in ten today, weighted toward the October to May heat season. From 2030 the file gains a summer category with a class C penalty behind it, and every rate here will need re-measuring against a year that carries two enforcement seasons.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions people search alongside the head term. The answers use the same window and the same measure as the tables above.

Which NYC neighborhood has the most 311 housing complaints?

Highbridge in the Bronx, at 870.5 HPD housing complaints per 1,000 apartments in the 12 months to September 22, 2026, against a citywide 313. Belmont follows at 757.5 and Hamilton Heights at 756.1. By raw count the biggest boroughs lead instead, because a count tracks how many apartments an area holds. The Bronx recorded 301,671 complaints and Brooklyn 263,144.

How often does a 311 housing complaint become a violation?

HPD issued a violation on 39.8% of the 318,116 complaints it inspected and ruled on in the year to September 22, 2026. Measured against all 898,328 complaints filed, including duplicates and the ones where nobody could let the inspector in, the figure is 14.1%. The odds depend heavily on the category: 4.5 violations per 100 heat complaints, against 25.8 per 100 paint and plaster complaints.

Does calling 311 actually do anything?

It creates a dated record whether or not an inspector issues a violation, and that record supports a housing court case later. When a violation does follow, the effect is measurable. The Comptroller found that a heat violation correlated with a 62% drop in heat complaints at that building the next heat season. The same review found 901 buildings with persistent heat problems across seven years, 20% of which drew no enforcement at all.

What do New Yorkers complain to 311 about most?

Heat and hot water, by a wide margin, at 39.9% of all HPD housing complaints. Unsanitary conditions, which covers roaches, mice, rats and garbage, takes 15.1%. Plumbing takes 9.3% and paint or plaster 7.5%. Everything else, including water leaks, doors and windows, electrical work, floors, appliances and elevators, splits the remaining 28%.

Can my landlord retaliate if I call 311 about my apartment?

Retaliation is unlawful. Real Property Law 223-b creates a rebuttable presumption that an owner acted in retaliation if they serve a notice to quit, start a case to recover the apartment or try to change your tenancy terms within a year of your good faith complaint to a government agency. The owner then has to establish a non-retaliatory motive. Keep the complaint number and the date.

How do I check 311 housing complaints for a specific address?

Search the address and read its own record rather than its neighborhood average. Look at how many complaints the building drew in the last year, which categories repeat, and whether HPD issued violations or closed the complaints without one. A building with twenty complaints and no violations is telling you something different from one with five complaints and four violations. Filing a complaint of your own adds to that record.