HPD Housing Court Cases: Heat, Repairs and Harassment
HPD opened or joined 10,485 Housing Court cases in 2025. See tenant repair, harassment and heat case trends since 2015 by borough, with each case type defined.
Updated October 12, 2026 · Data: NYC Open Data / HPD
Most Housing Court cases involving HPD start with tenants, not the city. In 2025, HPD opened or was named in 10,485 cases, and 48% were tenant repair cases (HP actions). Harassment cases have more than doubled since 2015, while non-lead access warrant cases, where HPD asks a court to let it in to fix hazards, have almost disappeared from the data.
Roofy data
HPD Housing Court cases in 2025
Cases in HPD's Housing Litigations dataset, by date opened
What HPD's litigation data covers
HPD's Housing Litigation Division (HLD) brings cases in Housing Court against owners of private buildings to enforce the Housing Maintenance Code and the Multiple Dwelling Law. When tenants sue their landlord for repairs, HPD is automatically named as a party and its attorneys take part. HPD calls these tenant-started cases a "Tenant Action or HP Action." The Housing Litigations dataset lists both kinds: cases HPD starts and cases it joins. Landlord-tenant cases that do not involve HPD, such as nonpayment cases, are not in it.
How the mix has changed since 2015
Source: NYC Open Data, HPD Housing Litigations · data as of 2026-10-12
Every major case type dropped in 2020, then recovered at different speeds. Tenant Action cases went from 2,303 in 2020 to 5,534 in 2024, slightly above their 2015 level of 5,252, before easing to 5,081 in 2025.
Harassment cases grew the most. There were 900 in 2015 and 2,761 at the peak in 2024. Their share of all cases rose from 7% in 2015 to 24% in 2025.
Heat and Hot Water cases have not returned to their pre-2020 levels. HPD opened 4,142 in 2018 and 2,410 in 2025. Access warrant cases for non-lead hazards fell from 1,109 in 2022 to 120 in 2025 and 2 so far in 2026. The dataset does not say why.
Heat cases follow the heating season
Since 2015, 88% of Heat and Hot Water cases were opened between October and April. March is the busiest month, with 6,083 cases over the period. Cases still come in over the summer (412 in June, 593 in July and 667 in August across all years). That fits the rules: the heat requirement applies October through May, but hot water must be provided all year.
By borough
Source: NYC Open Data, HPD Housing Litigations · data as of 2026-10-12
The Bronx had the most cases in 2025 (3,475), followed by Brooklyn (2,734), Manhattan (2,082), Queens (1,903) and Staten Island (291). Harassment cases were most common in the Bronx (797) and Queens (702), ahead of Brooklyn (609).
This year so far
From January 1 to October 12, 2026, the dataset shows 7,254 cases, compared with 8,448 in the same stretch of 2025. Harassment cases fell from 1,941 to 1,218, and Tenant Action cases from 4,047 to 3,905. Comprehensive cases went the other way, from 98 to 221. Lead access warrant cases are not following the non-lead ones down: 86 in 2015, 121 in 2025. Recent months may still fill in as HPD adds records, so treat the 2026 drop as provisional.
Every case type, defined
| Case type | What it is | 2025 | 2026 (to Oct 12) | Since 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tenant Action | Tenant-started repair case (HP action). HPD is automatically named as a party. | 5,081 | 3,905 | 52,981 |
| Heat and Hot Water | HPD seeks correction of heat and hot water violations. | 2,410 | 1,728 | 29,680 |
| Tenant Action/Harassment | Tenant-started case that also claims harassment by the owner. | 2,476 | 1,218 | 19,237 |
| Access Warrant - Non-Lead | HPD seeks a warrant to enter and correct immediately hazardous violations after the owner denied access. | 120 | 2 | 9,133 |
| Comprehensive | HPD seeks correction of all violations in a building plus civil penalties. | 115 | 221 | 3,694 |
| False Certification Non-Lead | HPD seeks civil penalties where an owner falsely certified that violations were corrected. | 43 | 1 | 3,624 |
| CONH | Certification of No Harassment review an owner needs before certain permits (HPD CONH program). | 85 | 71 | 1,400 |
| Access Warrant - lead | Access warrant where the hazard involves lead-based paint. | 121 | 89 | 873 |
| Comp Supplemental Cases | Follow-up to a Comprehensive case. Not described on the HPD pages we checked. | 19 | 13 | 634 |
| Lead False Certification | False certification of lead paint violation corrections. | 5 | 0 | 250 |
| 7A | HPD seeks a court-appointed 7A administrator for a building the owner has failed to maintain. | 9 | 4 | 171 |
| Failure to Register Only | Case about failure to register the building with HPD. Not described on the HPD pages we checked. | 1 | 0 | 126 |
| Heat Supplemental Cases | Follow-up to a Heat and Hot Water case. Not described on the HPD pages we checked. | 0 | 1 | 97 |
| HLD - Other Case Type | Other Housing Litigation Division case. No description published. | 0 | 1 | 6 |
Of the cases opened in 2025, 609 Tenant Action cases and 195 Heat and Hot Water cases were still marked pending on our query date. The dataset recorded a judgment ("YES") on 241 of the 10,485 cases opened in 2025.
What this data can and cannot tell you
What to do with this
If your landlord will not make repairs, an HP action is how tenants get a court order. Read HP actions: taking your landlord to Housing Court and tenant harassment in NYC. For heat problems, start with what to do when there is no heat. To see whether a building you are considering has HPD litigation, read what HPD litigation records reveal and look up the address on Roofy's NYC building lookup.
Re-ran all eight queries in the data file against 59kj-x8nc on 2026-10-12; yearly counts by type, 2025 borough and status counts, 2026 year-to-date, same-period 2025, judgments (241 of 10,485) and heat cases by month all match. Latest case open date is 2026-10-07. Corrected the limits note: pre-2015 cases (back to 2004) are real records outside our range, not bad dates; only two 2030-dated records were dropped as impossible. Narrowed the access-warrant claim to non-lead warrants (lead access warrants rose). Case type definitions checked against the HPD Housing Litigation and CONH pages; types they do not describe are labeled as such.
Sources
- Housing Litigations (59kj-x8nc) · NYC Open Data / HPD (accessed October 12, 2026)
- Housing Litigation (HPD Housing Litigation Division) · NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (accessed October 12, 2026)
- Certification of No Harassment (CONH) · NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (accessed October 12, 2026)
- Housing Litigations dataset description · NYC Open Data / HPD (accessed October 12, 2026)
- Heat and Hot Water Information · NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (accessed October 12, 2026)
General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules change; confirm with the agency or a professional before you act.
Related
- GuideHP actions: taking your landlord to Housing Court for repairs
- GuideTenant harassment in NYC: what counts and how to fight it
- GuideNo heat or hot water in your NYC apartment: what to do
- GuideHPD Litigation Records: What They Reveal
- GuideNYC Housing Court: what to expect and how to prepare
- GuideNYC heat and hot water rules: temperatures and dates