There is a New York City obligation that applies to essentially every apartment building in Brooklyn, requires an annual inspection and an annual notice, carries penalties that accrue daily, and which a very large number of small building owners have never performed.

It is Local Law 55 of 2018, the Asthma-Free Housing Act, and the reason it goes unnoticed is that it sounds like a health initiative rather than a compliance duty.

Three units, and no other trigger

Local Law 55 layers an annual indoor allergen inspection requirement onto the Housing Maintenance Code, and it applies to every multiple dwelling with three or more units. That includes rental buildings, condos and co-ops alike.

Compare that with the obligations owners tend to know better:

  • Lead paint requires a pre-1960 building and a child under six.
  • FISP requires more than six stories.
  • Elevator rules require an elevator.

Local Law 55 has none of that. There is no building-age cutoff, no occupancy trigger, no height threshold. Three apartments is the whole test.

That breadth is exactly why it is missed. An owner of a six-unit walk-up reads about a citywide asthma law and reasonably assumes it is aimed at large landlords. It is aimed at them.

The four duties

1. The annual notice. Provide the Allergen Hazards in Your Home notice to every tenant at lease signing and annually thereafter. Like the lead notice, this is a recurring obligation, not a move-in formality.

2. The annual inspection. Inspect units for indoor allergen hazards and for the conditions that produce them. The annual cycle runs to 31 December.

3. Remediation. Correct any hazard found, using appropriate work practices.

4. Investigation on complaint. Whenever a complaint arrives — from the tenant directly or via HPD — investigate it. This duty is not annual; it is triggered.

What you are actually looking for

The hazards named are mold and pests — mice, cockroaches and rats — together with the conditions conducive to them.

That last phrase carries most of the weight, and it is the same principle behind Rat Mitigation Zone enforcement: the city regulates conditions, not just sightings. A unit with no visible mice and a persistent gap under the sink at the riser penetration has a condition. A bathroom with no visible mold and a slow leak behind the tile has a condition.

In practice the inspection should be looking at:

  • Moisture sources — leaks, condensation on cold-water risers, poor bathroom ventilation, window and roof leaks tracking down inside walls.
  • Visible mold on walls, ceilings, around tubs and windows, behind fixtures.
  • Pest entry points — gaps at pipe penetrations, floorboard and baseboard gaps, unsealed voids at the foundation, and around the trash area.
  • Pest evidence — droppings, gnawing, runways.
  • Waste handling, which is the food supply, and which the NYC Bin containerization rules have now changed for most buildings anyway.

Confirm the current requirements, notice form and inspection scope with HPD before relying on this summary.

The penalty accrues by the day

HPD issues violations for failure to remediate, with penalties reported at up to $125 per day, and both HPD and DOB have been actively enforcing.

A daily-accruing penalty behaves very differently from a flat fine. A $125 ticket is an annoyance. A $125-per-day condition that sits through a winter while nobody schedules the repair is a materially different number, and it arrives alongside the tenant complaint and whatever follows it.

That structure should shape the response. With Local Law 55, the cost of delay is not fixed — it compounds — which makes a fast, documented remediation cheaper than a considered one.

Put it on the December calendar with the others

A pattern has emerged across these obligations that is worth naming, because it is the single most useful scheduling insight for a Brooklyn owner:

Four separate obligations, four agencies, one seven-week window straddling the holidays and the worst weather of the year.

Almost none of them require year-end performance. They require annual performance. An owner who runs the inspections in September and October, and lets the December and January dates be filing dates rather than working dates, removes the entire crunch. An owner who does not spends January chasing vendors who are already fully booked.

Do it in one visit

Local Law 55 and the lead paint annual inspection are separate duties with different triggers, but they are performed by walking the same units and looking at the same surfaces. So are the pest and moisture checks that a sensible preventive maintenance round covers anyway.

The efficient arrangement is a single annual unit visit that satisfies Local Law 55, covers the lead investigation where the building and occupancy trigger it, and produces documentation for both. The inefficient arrangement is three separate visits scheduled by three different people, which is what happens when nobody owns the calendar.

Where this sits in management

Local Law 55 is the clearest example on this site of an obligation that is universal, annual, penalised daily, and routinely unperformed — because it has a friendly name and no obvious enforcement trigger until a complaint arrives.

Running that calendar, combining the visits, documenting what was inspected, and remediating fast enough that a daily penalty never starts is a core part of apartment building management and the legal and regulatory compliance work around it.

If your building has three or more units and you cannot say when its last indoor allergen inspection was, schedule a consultation or call 718-568-9278.

This article is general information, not legal advice, and reflects requirements as of August 2026. Notice forms, inspection scope, mold licensing thresholds and penalty amounts change. Confirm your building's obligations with HPD.