If you own an older multifamily building in Brooklyn, lead paint compliance is one of the few landlord obligations that's genuinely non-negotiable. It isn't a single form you sign at lease-up and forget. It's an ongoing program — annual notices, yearly inspections, safe renovation practices, and record-keeping — enforced aggressively by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), layered on top of a federal disclosure rule and, for many units, a subsidy inspection on top of that.
This guide focuses on what it actually takes to run that program correctly, year after year, in the kind of pre-war Brooklyn buildings — Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Bushwick, Flatbush — that make up so much of the borough's rental stock. For the specific federal and city disclosure paperwork you sign at lease signing, see our companion piece on lead paint disclosure rules; this article picks up where disclosure leaves off and covers the ongoing compliance duties.
Why Brooklyn landlords can't treat this as boilerplate
New York's housing stock is old. A large share of Brooklyn's multifamily buildings were built well before 1960, which is exactly the housing lead paint law was written around — paint made before the 1978 federal ban was routinely lead-based, and older buildings are far more likely to have layers of it under newer coats. Add a young child to the household and NYC law doesn't ask you to prove lead paint is absent; it presumes it's present until you show otherwise.
That presumption is the single most important thing to understand. You are not compliant because you've never had a complaint. You're compliant because you've actively done the notices, inspections, and remediation the law requires — every year, on every covered unit.
The three layers of lead paint law in NYC
Owners often think of "lead paint compliance" as one rule. It's actually three, stacked on top of each other:
| Layer | What it requires | Who enforces it |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Lead Disclosure Rule | Disclose known lead hazards, hand over the EPA pamphlet, and get a signed lead-warning form before a pre-1978 lease is signed or renewed | EPA / HUD |
| Local Law 1 of 2004 (Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act) | Annual child-inquiry notice, annual inspection, and lead-safe remediation of any hazard found in covered units | HPD |
| Local Law 31 of 2020 | XRF testing by a certified inspector to confirm whether lead paint is actually present, both citywide and at every unit turnover | HPD |
Each layer is real and each is separately enforceable. Passing the disclosure step doesn't satisfy Local Law 1's inspection duty, and satisfying Local Law 1 doesn't excuse you from Local Law 31 testing. Owners get into trouble by treating one as a substitute for the others.
Who Local Law 1 covers
Local Law 1 applies when all three of these are true for a given apartment:
- The building is a multiple dwelling with three or more units.
- It was built before 1960 — or built 1960–1978 if the owner has actual knowledge that lead-based paint is present.
- A child under six lives in or regularly visits the apartment.
Meet all three and the unit is presumptively covered. That triggers three affirmative, ongoing duties:
- Annual notice. Send every tenant a notice — commonly due by February 15 — asking whether a child under six lives in or regularly visits the apartment. This has to go out every year, not just once at move-in.
- Annual inspection. Physically inspect covered units at least once a year for peeling, chipping, or otherwise deteriorated paint and other lead hazards. HPD treats visible peeling paint in a covered unit as a hazard on sight — you don't get to argue it's cosmetic.
- Lead-safe remediation. Fix any hazard you find using lead-safe work practices performed by EPA-certified workers. Dry-scraping, open-flame paint removal, and power-sanding without containment are exactly the wrong methods — they aerosolize lead dust and make the hazard worse, not better.
Missing any one of these — the notice, the inspection, or a proper repair — is independently enough for an HPD violation, even if the other two were done correctly.
Local Law 31: confirming what's actually there
Local Law 1 works on a presumption. Local Law 31 of 2020 adds a testing requirement on top of it: owners of Local Law 1 buildings must have covered units XRF-tested by a certified lead inspector to determine whether lead-based paint is actually present, rather than just assumed.
The original citywide testing deadline — August 9, 2025 — has already passed. If your building's units were tested and the results are on file, you're largely current on that piece; if you're not sure, that's worth confirming immediately, because the obligation didn't end at the deadline. Units also require retesting at tenant turnover, so this becomes a recurring line item in your leasing process, not a one-time project. Building XRF testing into your standard turnover checklist — alongside tenant placement and unit prep — keeps you from rediscovering this obligation every time a lease turns over.
Renovations: the EPA RRP Rule
Compliance doesn't stop at inspection and disclosure — it extends into how you actually do repair and renovation work. Any job in pre-1978 housing that disturbs painted surfaces — replacing a window, opening a wall, sanding trim — is generally covered by the federal Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Rule. That requires:
- Work performed by an EPA lead-safe-certified firm, with trained, certified workers.
- Containment of the work area and wet methods rather than dry sanding or scraping.
- Specialized cleanup and verification before the area is returned to use.
- A signed pre-renovation disclosure given to occupants, kept on file.
Civil penalties for RRP violations are real and adjusted for inflation, so we won't guess at a current dollar figure here — confirm the current maximum directly at epa.gov before treating this as a low-stakes shortcut. In practice, hiring uncertified contractors to save money on a renovation in an occupied, pre-1978 Brooklyn building is one of the more common — and most avoidable — compliance failures we see. This is exactly the kind of work our renovation and capital-improvement oversight is built to manage properly from the start.
Where subsidized and voucher tenancies raise the stakes
This is where lead compliance and Yak Management's core specialty intersect directly. A large share of the older, lead-covered buildings we manage also house tenants using Section 8/HCV, CityFHEPS, HASA, or FHEPS. Those programs run their own separate inspection track — a Housing Quality Standards (HQS) inspection, conducted by NYCHA, HRA/DSS, or HUD depending on the program — before a subsidy contract starts and periodically afterward.
HQS inspections check for exactly the peeling and deteriorated paint conditions Local Law 1 targets. Fail that inspection in a unit with a young child, and the consequences go beyond an HPD violation: move-in can be delayed, subsidy payments can be interrupted, or the HAP contract funding part of the rent can be jeopardized. For a full walkthrough of what inspectors actually check, see our HQS inspection checklist for Brooklyn landlords. Coordinating lead compliance and voucher inspection prep as one process — instead of scrambling separately for each — is core to how we run government housing programs management for owners.
What a real compliance program looks like
Owners who stay out of trouble on lead paint tend to run the same simple system, year after year:
- A tracked annual-notice calendar for every covered unit, so the February window never gets missed building-wide.
- A yearly physical inspection documented in writing, not just "we haven't heard complaints."
- A vetted, certified contractor list for any repair or renovation touching painted surfaces in a pre-1978 unit.
- Current XRF test records on file for every covered unit, with turnover retesting built into the leasing workflow.
- Coordination with HQS inspection prep for any voucher-assisted unit, so lead conditions don't surface as a subsidy problem first.
Run through a consistent property inspections process and tracked through a single system — we manage ours through AppFolio — this becomes routine rather than reactive. Run informally, or building by building without a system, it's exactly the kind of thing that surfaces as an HPD violation or a failed voucher inspection at the worst possible time. Our HPD violations guide covers what to do if you're already facing one.
The bottom line
Lead paint law in NYC is unusually unforgiving because the harm it prevents — childhood lead poisoning — is permanent. HPD, EPA, and the voucher agencies all enforce their pieces of it, and the pieces overlap. For Brooklyn owners of older multifamily buildings, the fix isn't complicated: know which of your units are covered, run the annual notice and inspection every year without fail, use certified contractors for any work that disturbs paint, keep your Local Law 31 testing current, and coordinate lead compliance with any subsidy inspections your tenants are subject to.
That's exactly the kind of compliance program we run for owners across Brooklyn — rent-stabilized and subsidized housing is our specialty, not an afterthought, and lead paint compliance is one piece of the larger regulatory picture we handle so owners don't have to become HPD experts themselves. If you want a clear-eyed read on where your building actually stands, schedule a property consultation or call 718-568-9278.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Lead paint law involves overlapping federal, state, and city rules with fact-specific requirements and penalties that change over time. Confirm your building's current obligations and any specific dollar figures with HPD, the EPA, and a qualified attorney before acting.