Mold in a New York City apartment is not a housekeeping dispute. Since Local Law 55 of 2018 — the Asthma-Free Housing Act — it is a condition the owner of a building with three or more units has a standing legal duty to look for, and to remove properly when it is there. This is what the law actually requires, what the city will do if you report it, and where the line falls between a condition you can clean yourself and one only a licensed professional may touch.
The duty exists whether or not you complain
The part of Local Law 55 most tenants have never heard of is the annual inspection. Administrative Code section 27-2017.2 requires the owner of a multiple dwelling — three or more units — to inspect every apartment at least once a year for indoor allergen hazards, and to fix what the inspection turns up. The statute groups mold with infestations of mice, rats and cockroaches, because the law was written about asthma rather than about property damage.
That framing matters for a practical reason. The owner's obligation is not triggered by your complaint and does not depend on you proving where the water came from. A recurring leak behind a wall is the owner's problem to find.
What has to happen when a unit turns over
Section 27-2017.5 is the provision worth knowing before you sign a lease: before a vacant unit in a multiple dwelling is reoccupied, the owner must remediate all visible mold and pest infestation and any underlying defect, and thoroughly clean any carpeting and furniture the owner supplies. A unit is supposed to be handed over clean and dry. If you moved into visible mold, that is not a condition you inherited fairly.
Owners must also give a notice and the Health Department's indoor allergen fact sheet when a lease is offered, so a tenant is told the standard the building is held to.
Who is allowed to remove it
This is where New York State law takes over from the city, and where a lot of bad remediation happens. Labor Law article 32 licenses mold work statewide. For a project covering more than ten square feet of affected material, the work requires licensed professionals, and the roles must be split: a licensed mold assessor writes the work plan, and a separate licensed mold remediation contractor carries it out. One company may not do both, which is the point of the statute — the person judging whether the job is finished must not be the person paid for the job.
Below that threshold, and for ordinary cleaning, article 32 does not require a licence. A patch of surface mould on bathroom tile grout is not a "project" in the statutory sense. A wall cavity is.
Local Law 55 layers city work practices on top: containment, safe removal, and correcting the moisture source rather than the stain. Paint over growth and the condition is not remediated, whatever the wall looks like on the day of the re-inspection.
Reporting it, and what the city does
Call 311 and report a mold condition; it routes to HPD. Section 27-2017.6 requires the department to inspect a mold or pest complaint within 30 days. If the inspector confirms the condition, HPD issues a violation against the building.
The class the inspector assigns decides the clock:
- Class A — non-hazardous. 90 days to correct.
- Class B — hazardous. 30 days. Most confirmed mold lands here.
- Class C — immediately hazardous. 21 days, and HPD re-inspects class B and class C mold violations whether or not the owner has certified the work done — which is unusual, and a sign of how the department treats this category.
A class A can be upgraded to B, and a B to C, if the owner neither corrects nor certifies. What the classes mean in general is at HPD violation classes; the mechanics of certification are in what to do when a landlord will not make repairs.
Why you want it in the record even if it gets fixed
An inspected, confirmed violation is a dated, public, third-party statement that the condition existed. It survives a change of managing agent, a change of owner and your own move. If the mold returns in eighteen months — which is what happens when the moisture source was never found — the earlier violation is the evidence that this is a recurrence rather than a new event.
It is also visible to the next tenant. Every confirmed violation appears on the building's public record, and you can read any building's on this site before you sign.
What the record will not tell you
An open mold violation does not prove mold is there today; a violation stays open until somebody certifies it corrected, and certification is a filing the owner has to make. Equally, no violation does not prove a building is clean — it may only mean nobody called 311. The annual inspection under section 27-2017.2 is a duty, not a public filing, so there is no dataset showing which owners actually did it.
General information about public records and about the law as written, not legal advice, and not tenant screening. Statutory citations: NYC Administrative Code sections 27-2017, 27-2017.2, 27-2017.3, 27-2017.5 and 27-2017.6, added by Local Law 55 of 2018 (the Asthma-Free Housing Act); New York State Labor Law article 32 (licensing of mold assessment and remediation). Correction periods and violation classes as published by NYC HPD. Checked 8 August 2026 — verify current text at the source before relying on it in a proceeding.