How Often Must Landlord Repair Damaged Window Screens

If you are moving into a New York City rental apartment, information technology'due south best to have a clear idea of what you tin look your landlord to provide. Heat and hot water are a given, of course—you shouldn't have to put up with unlivable conditions—but window blinds? Don't count on finding those.

Even though landlords don't take to provide a number of things that might seem pretty essential, like a refrigerator or stove—well-nigh of them do anyhow. Landlords install major appliances to attract renters, non just in market-rate apartments but in affordable housing and rent stabilized units. Afterward all, if you lot saw two apartments and one had a fridge and the other didn't, which ane are y'all going to apply for?

Only it tin be a shock to see an apartment in person that lacks something you lot're used to—like closets in the bedrooms. Yous may detect them missing in very old buildings, where New Yorkers traditionally made do with wardrobes to concur their clothes.

[Editor's note: An before version of this article was published in Apr 2021. We are presenting it again with updated information for February 2022.]

There are numerous state and local laws that outline a landlord's responsibleness—so many in fact that the State's Court of Appeals once referred to NYC housing laws as an "impenetrable thicket" of rules, regulations, and statutes, according to tenant attorney Sam Himmelstein, a partner at Himmelstein McConnell Gribben & Joseph (a Brick Hole-and-corner sponsor).

One of the almost of import set of rules is the warranty of habitability, which ensures the conditions in your apartment don't compromise your health in any way. The NYC Housing Maintenance Code, the Multiple Dwelling Law, and the provisions of the Rent Stabilization Regulations are also relevant depending on the type of identify you lot live in.

For clarity here'due south a list of 11 fundamental items landlords are required to provide (in most NYC rental buildings), followed by a list of what they are not—and y'all may be in for a surprise here.

ane. Heat, and hot and cold h2o

During the winter months from Oct 1st through May 31st, when the mercury dips below 55 degrees outside, a landlord must provide heat for a temperature of 68 during the day (6 a.g. to 10 p.thou.). At night at that place must be a temperature of at least 62 degrees maintained, regardless of the outside temperature.

This is what'due south referred to as "heat flavour" and building owners face fines during this time if apartments are too common cold.

two. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors

Landlords must provide and install at least one approved and operational carbon monoxide detector and smoke detector in each apartment. "The caveat hither is that you—the renter—must maintain a set of working batteries. At move-in, the apparatus must exist working, but keeping it working is on y'all," says Mike Jeneralczuk, an agent at Real NY.

If yous interruption or remove a detector, you lot are required to replace information technology.

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3. Fire rubber measures

Your flat should take a fire and emergency preparedness guide posted on the within of your front door. This data too needs to be posted in the mutual area, and distributed to each abode, new tenants, and annually during fire prevention week. It's worth a read too–information technology will tell y'all how to stay safe in a fire. Generally this guidance volition direct you to leave the building, shut the door, and call 911. In some buildings, however, you lot may be safer staying in your apartment. The fire escape plan will tell you if this is the case.

Some other feature of buildings with three or more than apartments is self-closing doors—these tin can assistance prevent fire and fume from one apartment spreading quickly throughout the building. Your landlord must besides make sure there are clear unobstructed exits. And if you lot have a gas stove you can asking stove knob covers which can go along them off-limits from pets or kids. If in that location'due south a child living with you under the age of half dozen, stove knob covers should be provided regardless of your request.

As well, if you're thinking of installing a key-locked gate on your burn down escape window, or a double cylinder lock, recollect over again—they're illegal.

4. Pest-gratuitous properties

Chances are you will come across a mouse or a roach (but hopefully non a rat) while living in a NYC apartment, and your landlord has an obligation to go on the building complimentary of pests. Holding owners are as well required to use ongoing measures to prevent infestations in or around their buildings. This is a requirement of Local Constabulary 55, passed in 2018. If mice, rats, or roaches are in either an apartment or mutual area, it's a violation and the landlord faces fines.

Apartment building owners are also required to annually inspect units for indoor allergen hazards, including mice, rats, roaches, and mold.

Equally for bedbugs, New York State law requires belongings owners to disclose infestation history dating dorsum one year to new tenants through the bedbug disclosure form you get with a charter. They must also submit an annual report on bedbug infestations and eradication methods.

5. Lead-free walls

NYC banned the use of lead-based paint in residential buildings in 1960, only information technology can still be in buildings congenital before and then. The city's Babyhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act requires landlords identify and remediate lead-based paint hazards in apartments where there are young children under the age of half dozen years sometime.

6. Paint or wallpaper on the walls

Landlords need to paint or comprehend your apartment's walls with wallpaper—so no exposed sheetrock—and they should too repaint or recover the walls every three years. Sarah Adler, an agent at Corcoran, says the requirement to repaint often comes equally a pleasant surprise to renters.

"If someone is settling into a place and they have been there for five years or and so, sometimes they are not even aware of the fact that they have the correct to take that apartment painted every three years," she says.

The only fourth dimension the toll of painting tin be passed to the tenant is if you asking a special brand of paint or a particular color, or if you lot cause impairment that requires a new paint job.

vii. Windows and lighting

With some exceptions, every room, including kitchens and bathrooms, should take at least one window opening onto the street, yard, or other outdoor space. This applies to apartment buildings built after 1929 and is outlined in the Multiple Home Law. Each window must properly light all portions of the room.

"There's a formula, and it depends on the size of the room, but in order to qualify as a room it has to meet calorie-free and air requirements," Himmelstein says.

If there isn't a window—and Adler says many buildings do not have a window in the kitchen or the bathroom—there are ventilation requirements.

The law states there must be at least six changes per hour of the air volume of a cooking infinite without a window or if it is on the height floor, it tin have a ventilated skylight at least 1 foot wide.

8. Window guards

Owners must provide and install window guards on all windows, including outset-floor bathrooms and windows leading onto a balcony or terrace, in apartments where a child 10 years of age or younger resides, and in each common surface area window, if there are whatsoever.

Fifty-fifty if you don't live with a kid of x years or younger, but you want guards—say you have friends or family who bring young children to visit you—y'all tin can still request them and the landlord is required to install them.

You encounter window guards most often in pre-war buildings. Adler says in new construction, windows but open up four inches for safe reasons, making the window guards redundant.

9. Locked forepart door and a peephole

"Well-nigh buildings must have a locked front end door to provide some security and so people can't walk right into the edifice," Himmelstein says.

In addition, your entry door should have a lock, and the landlord must requite you at to the lowest degree 1 key to it. In an apartment building with more than three units, the door should have a heavy-duty deadbolt operable by a fundamental from the outside and a thumb-plow from the inside, as well every bit a heavy-duty latch prepare. In that location should also be a chain door baby-sit so you can partially open up your door. This is all outlined in the Housing Maintenance Code.

There also should be an operating peephole in your entrance door, and located in a place that lets yous view whatever person immediately outside the entrance door.

10. Postal service service

The Housing Maintenance Lawmaking also makes articulate landlords are required to provide and maintain approved mailboxes and directories of tenants so they tin can get their postal service. With the ascent of next day delivery and online shopping, landlords are unlikely to argue with this, considering if they don't provide mailboxes, they have to take in the mail themselves and get their own employees to distribute it.

xi. Amenities

If you live in a market-rate apartment, your landlord must give you access to the amenities spelled out in your lease. In a rent-regulated flat the amenities you accept are governed by the Rent Stabilization Police's concept of required services. "These are services provided to you when you moved in, and they accept to be maintained," Himmelstein says.

If yous live in a rent-stabilized apartment and the landlord decides to take away the gym or the bike storage, they'd accept to inquire permission of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal. Sometimes DHCR gives authorization but with conditions. For example, if the doorman is discontinued, the landlord must come up with a replacement that provides an equivalent level of security, which could be an intercom organization or camera.

If the landlord does not ask permission or permission isn't granted you tin file a reduction of services complaint and your rent will be rolled back and frozen until the services are returned.

In a market-rate flat, if a detail amenity is listed in the lease, like the laundry room or a doorman, then they must exist provided for the duration of that lease. If they are not, it'due south a alienation of contract and the tenant would exist entitled to some kind of amercement, Himmelstein says.

11 things landlords are not required to provide

Many first-time renters are surprised to find out what's excluded from a landlord'southward list of responsibilities, just these things shouldn't come equally a stupor: Your lease spells out what you can look—and conversely, what is not included, a practiced reminder to ever read your lease very carefully and in advance of moving in.

"The clear-cut answer is the charter defines what'due south present," Jeneralczuk says.

Beneath are some of the more common amenities and services you might observe missing in a NYC rental.

1. Microwave and dishwasher

A lot of renters, particularly new ones, assume a kitchen will come with a microwave, but information technology's your responsibility to buy one if you want one. The same goes for the dishwasher. Of form a lot of landlords put these appliances in place in order to brand their apartments more than competitive and attract new tenants.

"Some clients from outside New York are shocked that landlords sometimes do not provide them. Sure, they're present in a lot of apartments, but they come with a cost tag and are definitely non a given," Jeneralczuk says.

two. Air conditioner and installation

If landlords are required to keep the rut on in the winter, you might expect they'd have to provide cooling in the summer but that'southward not the case. When y'all're looking for a rental and viewing a listing you lot might even see an Air-conditioning unit in the flat, but find it's gone by the time you move in.

Many NYC tenants buy their own in-window Air-conditioning units and then take them with them when they leave.

If you purchase an Air-conditioning, you'll also exist responsible for installing it. Your direction company won't pay for this merely they may be able to requite you the name of a contractor so the install can be done safely.

3. Refrigerator and stove

You'd be difficult pressed to find an apartment without a refrigerator or stove just a landlord is not legally required to provide either of these appliances.

In some apartments the fridge is very pocket-size, or the stove might but be a cooktop or two burner as opposed to a full-size oven. Himmelstein says it'southward possible the landlord could say the tenant has to provide their own appliances and repair them at their own expense.

Whatever appliances owners do provide, they are responsible for keeping them in working society. A landlord is also responsible for providing the gas to power a stove so even if you are asked to install your ain appliance, the ability must exist there to brand it function.

4. Burn down extinguishers

The New York Urban center fire code doesn't require that your landlord put portable fire extinguishers in your apartment or in any public hallways or corridors in the building.

This might seem counterintuitive but the burn and emergency preparedness guide attached to your front door has the instructions the Fire Department wants you to follow—usually exit the building, close the door, and call 911. Asking y'all to struggle with a fire extinguisher you have probably never used earlier will wearisome your efforts to get out, delay yous from alerting the Fire Department, and increase risks for residents in the building.

You tin, of course, purchase your own extinguishers but you lot should still follow the fire escape plan provided by your landlord and keep in mind that extinguishers benefit from periodic inspections by a licensed company.

One caveat: A stationary fire extinguisher must exist installed in whatsoever area with fuel-called-for equipment, then you should meet i in your building's mechanical room where the banality or hot water heater is installed.

5. Window screens

Window screens are a provision that many people expect, simply which landlords are not required to provide. Adler says this is ofttimes a surprise for tenants who detect mosquitoes are a big problem in the city during the summertime.

"Nearly windows tin just open the four inches for New York City child safety, then depending on what kind of window it is, sometimes the screens need to be custom congenital," she says. Another pick is to purchase a tension screen that can exist fitted into an open window but this is non a landlord's responsibility.

six. Window shades and curtain rods

Many apartments are listed without curtains or blinds and if you lot don't see them in the listing, don't assume it's because the owner is measuring up for an install. Landlords in NYC aren't required to provide curtains or blinds for your windows. That's on y'all.

7. Light bulb replacements

The lights should be working when you move in, but when the bulbs burn down out, it'southward your job to supercede them.

viii. Reimbursement for personal losses or amercement

Landlords are not responsible if the apartment is damaged unless it is due to gross negligence.

If there's a leak and some property gets damaged, the landlord is not responsible for your possessions. Occasionally, a landlord may concur to a settlement, but the solution is for tenants to have renter'due south insurance. It's non very expensive and covers these kinds of situations.

nine. Top locks and replacement keys

A landlord needs to provide but one operation lock on your apartment door. Any additional locks you might want for security are your responsibleness.

If you lock yourself out and your super is not available to let you in, you will have to telephone call a locksmith and pay for the new lock and keys.

ten. Closets

A sleeping accommodation in NYC must be at to the lowest degree lxxx square feet in size with at least ane window but not all bedrooms come with closets. A tenant might inquire a landlord to build a cupboard earlier moving in, or might ask for coin toward buying a wardrobe, merely that'southward entirely up to the landlord and not a requirement.

eleven. Security for delivered packages

Package theft is an ongoing upshot as people rely on online deliveries. It's peculiarly a challenge for walk-up buildings, which typically exercise non have a doorman.

A bundle left by a tenant's front door which is then stolen is not the landlord'due south responsibility. "Even if in that location is no package room and it is left in a vestibule, they are not responsible," Adler says. A property manager might be able to help observe out who stole the packet through the video camera system but they are not liable for the loss.

Previous versions of this article included writing and reporting by Donna Chiliad. Airoldi.

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Source: https://www.brickunderground.com/rent/nyc-landlord-requirements-and-what-is-not-provided

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