NYC Elevators: Inspections, Violations and Complaints

New York City has 81,378 active elevators in 39,795 buildings, according to the Department of Buildings' elevator compliance records. On 2026-10-12, 2,937 of them (3.6%) had no Category 1 safety test report on file for 2025 or later. DOB issued 30,175 elevator violations in 2025 for missed filings from the 2024 cycle, and New Yorkers filed 21,424 elevator complaints with 311 in 2025, up 59% from 2020.

What the law requires

DOB's elevator compliance rules require two things every calendar year (January 1 to December 31): a periodic inspection, which is a visual inspection, and a Category 1 (CAT1) test, a no-load safety test. A heavier Category 5 test with rated load is due every five years. Reports are filed in DOB NOW. Periodic reports are due within 14 days of the inspection and CAT1 reports within 21 days; DOB stops accepting them on January 14 and January 21 of the next year. If the inspection finds defects, the owner must fix them within 90 days and file an affirmation of correction within 14 days after that.

Miss a deadline and DOB issues a civil penalty. Its fee table lists $1,000 for failing to file a residential CAT1 report, $3,000 for a non-residential one, and $3,000 for not filing a correction for periodic inspection defects, plus monthly late fees. DOB says these violations stay on the property until the penalty is paid or waived and a current report is on file.

Where the elevators are

Manhattan has more than half of the city's elevators: 42,481 devices in 15,960 buildings. Brooklyn is a distant second with 17,394. Staten Island, with mostly low-rise housing, has 1,380. The same compliance dataset also tracks 7,056 active accessibility lifts and 2,608 escalators, which we leave out of the elevator totals here.

How many are behind on testing

Each device record shows the latest year for which a CAT1 report was filed. Because the 2026 cycle is still open until December 31, 52,085 elevators (64%) already have a 2026 report and most of the rest show 2025. The 2,937 active elevators whose latest CAT1 year is 2024 or earlier, or blank, missed at least the 2025 test filing. That is a small share overall, but it is not even across boroughs:

A missing filing does not prove a test never happened. The report may be late, the device may be newly installed, or the record may be out of date. It does mean DOB has no CAT1 report for that elevator for 2025 in the public data.

Violations for missed filings

DOB issues elevator filing violations in batches after each cycle closes, not as they happen. The public data shows batches in August and October 2023, September and October 2024, August and October 2025, and October 2026. So the clearest way to read them is by the cycle year written in each violation, not the date it was issued.

Violations for unfiled CAT1 test reports fell from 8,012 for the 2018 cycle to 5,428 for 2024 and 4,712 for 2025 (issued in October 2026). Violations for not filing a correction after a test found defects are more common, roughly 8,600 to 10,900 a cycle, with a spike to 20,802 for 2022. DOB's data does not say why 2022 was higher. For the 2024 cycle, correction violations (19,501) outnumbered missing-report violations (10,674) by nearly two to one, so more filings were missed at the repair stage than at the inspection stage.

Of the 30,175 elevator violations issued in 2025, 23,113 (77%) were still active on 2026-10-12. Manhattan had 14,353 of them, in line with its share of elevators.

What tenants complain about

311 routes complaints with the type "Elevator" to DOB. Those complaints rose from 13,442 in 2020 to 21,424 in 2025. 13,153 of the 2025 complaints (61%) were filed under "single device on property / no alternate service", meaning the building had no other elevator to use.

The Bronx stands out. It has 11% of the city's active elevators but produced 41% of 2025 elevator complaints: about 100 complaints for every 100 elevators, against 12 in Manhattan. These are raw complaint counts, so one outage that many neighbors report counts several times, and the rate does not adjust for building size or how often elevators are used.

HPD also logs elevator problems in apartment buildings, but in 2025 every one of its 1,772 elevator problems was a maintenance item, and 1,248 were for a dirty or unsanitary car. Complaints filed under the 311 type "Elevator" go to DOB, so the 311 numbers above are the better measure of elevator service problems.

Limits of this data

• Device counts and statuses are a snapshot from 2026-10-12. DOB updates the compliance dataset continuously.
• The latest CAT1 year shows what was filed, not whether the elevator is safe. A filed report can list defects.
• Violations count missed paperwork, not accidents or breakdowns. Some are later dismissed or waived.
• The 311 dataset starts in 2020, so we cannot compare with earlier years here. Complaint counts include duplicates.
• This report does not include older BIS-era elevator violations or OATH/ECB summonses, which are in separate datasets.