HPD sorts violations into three classes by severity: Class A (non-hazardous, 90 days to fix), Class B (hazardous, 30 days), Class C (immediately hazardous, 24 hours). Class C is the one to read closely, and how long it's been open matters more than how many there are.
The city grades apartment problems on a three-letter scale, and the letters carry legal deadlines.
Class A: non-hazardous. Peeling paint in a hallway, a missing sign. Annoying, not dangerous. The landlord gets 90 days.
Class B: hazardous. Broken plumbing, mold, roaches, mice. The stuff that makes daily life worse and health slowly worse than that. 30 days.
Class C: immediately hazardous. No heat. No hot water. A gas leak. A broken front-door lock. The law gives the landlord 24 hours, because the condition is judged capable of hurting someone today, with two exceptions the code stretches to 21 days: lead-based paint hazards and missing or defective window guards.
That 24-hour deadline is the number to hold onto, because here's what the records show happens to it. Right now, across the last two years of city data, 212,190 Class C violations sit open. Of those, 76,617 blew past their legal correction deadline more than a year ago. The deadline was one day. The wait has been four hundred.
One building makes the scale concrete: 530 East 169th Street in the Bronx currently carries 250 open Class C violations (250 conditions the city classified as immediate threats), and the oldest has been open for 730 days. The deadline for each was 24 hours. That is not a building having a bad month. That is a building telling you, in the city's own records, exactly what your winter there would look like.
So when you read a building's file, don't just count. Ask three questions. Which class? A pile of Class A is cosmetic; a handful of open Class C is not. How long open? Fixed-last-month means things break and get repaired; open-for-two-years means they break and stay broken. And is there a pattern – the same condition, season after season?
One reassurance so the letters don't scare you off a decent building: most NYC buildings have something on file. A closed Class B from last spring is normal city living. Open Class C with birthdays is the thing this scale exists to warn you about. One more caution before you trust a clean-looking file: closed doesn't mean fixed.
Check any building's classes, deadlines, and open dates in one search. Your first three reports are full reports, free.