Most enforcement in New York City is transactional. A violation is issued, it gets corrected, it gets certified, it closes.

The Alternative Enforcement Program is different. It is what happens when a building's record has deteriorated enough that HPD stops treating violations one at a time and starts treating the building as the problem.

What it is

AEP was established under Local Law 29 of 2007 and targets the city's most distressed multiple dwellings.

Buildings are selected once a year, against pre-defined thresholds for open HPD violations per dwelling unit and Emergency Repair Program charges. Historically around 200 to 250 buildings are selected in each annual round.

Selection is mechanical rather than discretionary. Nobody decides your building deserves this. It meets a threshold or it does not.

How a building gets there

Reported selection criteria include a ratio of four or more open class B and C violations per dwelling unit, issued within the past five years, alongside emergency repair charges.

Note the per dwelling unit part, because it changes who this reaches. The threshold is a density, not an absolute count. A six-unit Brooklyn building does not need a large number of violations to reach four per unit — it needs twenty-four. A building that size can accumulate that quietly across a few years of deferred maintenance and slow certification.

The violations most commonly issued in Brooklyn — heat and hot water, leaks, mold, pests, peeling paint, defective detectors — are exactly the class B and C conditions that count toward it.

Emergency Repair charges compound the problem

ERP charges accrue when HPD performs repairs itself, to correct immediately hazardous violations the owner failed to address in time. The city does the work and bills the owner.

That mechanism appears repeatedly across New York enforcement — it is the same structure as HPD stepping in on heat, and as DOHMH performing rat work and billing the property. And here it does something additional: those charges then feed back into AEP selection.

So the failure to repair produces a charge, and the charge helps select the building for heightened enforcement. A building in that loop is being pushed further in by its own history.

The four-month window

Once selected, an owner has four months to meet the discharge requirements. Reported requirements include:

  • Correcting the HPD violations
  • Paying outstanding ERP charges, or entering a payment agreement with the Department of Finance
  • Registering the property with HPD
  • Submitting affidavits regarding proper correction of mold and vermin violations

Four months is enough time to do real work on a building that has somebody working the list. It is not enough time if the response begins in month three.

Confirm current selection criteria, discharge requirements and timelines with HPD. Program details change.

What happens if you miss it

Here is the consequence owners do not see coming, and it is the reason this page exists.

Active participation in AEP for more than four months since 1 February 2016 is among the reported grounds for placement on HPD's Certification of No Harassment list.

Follow that through. A building on the CONH list cannot obtain DOB permits for a wide range of ordinary renovation work — including any alteration that changes the layout, configuration or location of any portion of a dwelling unit — without first obtaining a certification from HPD.

So the chain runs:

Violations accumulate → the building is selected for AEP → the four-month window is missed → the building can be placed on the CONH list → permits for ordinary renovation stop being available.

An owner who wanted to renovate their way out of a deteriorated building can find that the deterioration itself removed the ability to do the work. That is a genuinely difficult position, and it is reached one uncorrected violation at a time.

Small buildings are not exempt from the logic

The density threshold is the point. A small Brooklyn walk-up with a persistent leak, a mold condition, a pest problem and a few uncorrected paint violations can reach four per unit faster than an owner expects — particularly where violations were corrected physically but never certified, and therefore remain open on the record.

That distinction is worth stating plainly: HPD counts open violations. Work done without certification does not help you here.

The way out is the way it was avoided

There is no procedural shortcut. Discharge requires correcting the violations properly, certifying them, keeping the registration current, and dealing with the ERP charges rather than letting them sit.

What determines whether a building clears the window is simply whether somebody is working the list — with a schedule, with contractors booked, and with the certifications filed as work completes.

That is the same discipline that keeps a building out of the program in the first place, which is covered in HPD violations: how to avoid and resolve them. The difference is that once a building is in AEP, there is a clock on it.

Where a managing agent carries this

Keeping open violations from accumulating, certifying corrections rather than only performing them, keeping registration current, addressing emergency repair charges before they compound, and — for a building already selected — running the four-month window as a project with a schedule is core to apartment building management and the legal and regulatory compliance work underneath it.

If your building has been selected for AEP, or has open violations accumulating toward the threshold, schedule a consultation or call 718-568-9278. The window is short and it does not extend.

This article is general information, not legal advice. AEP selection criteria, discharge requirements and program details change. Confirm your building's position with HPD and a qualified New York attorney.