Earlier this year, attorneys from NYLAG’s Tenants’ Rights and Special Litigation Units won a settlement mandating better transparency in housing code violation reporting for NYCHA properties. As of Sept. 15 and going forward, violations reported in NYCHA developments will be viewable on HPDOnline.
For the first time, housing code violations issued by the city at NYCHA properties are now publicly available—what advocates say is a win for transparency, giving public housing residents information about their buildings that tenants in privately-owned properties have long had access to.
The city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD) has begun publishing the NYCHA violations in its online portal, as well as on the NYC Open Data website, as part of a legal settlement approved in June. The records so far date back about a month, and include more than 500 violations issued following court-ordered apartment inspections (HPD inspectors typically only come to NYCHA-owned apartments if ordered to so by housing court).
“This transparency will empower NYCHA residents to better understand their apartment conditions and advocate for themselves and their communities,” Danielle Tarantolo, director of the Special Litigation Unit at New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG), said in a statement Tuesday.
NYCHA tenants, including Stewart Gracia, who moved into NYCHA’s Jacob Riis Houses in lower Manhattan five years ago, where he experienced “a bedroom ceiling leak, chronic roach infestation, lack of heat, mold and hot water outages,” according to NYLAG.
“But because HPD did not publish information about violations in his and his neighbors’ apartments, he could not investigate violations in the building before he moved in, could not determine whether there were open housing code violations in his building for the same or similar housing conditions, and could not search the HPD website for open housing code violations to use as evidence in his Housing Court case,” NYLAG said in a press release.
Read the full story, originally published in City Limits on Oct. 7, 2025.
