NYC Local Law 1: Lead Paint Rules, XRF Testing, and Penalties

NYC Local Law 1 of 2004 makes building owners responsible for finding and fixing lead paint hazards in apartments where young children live or regularly spend time. The lead paint requirements under NYC Local Law 1 apply to multiple dwellings built before January 1, 1960, and to buildings constructed between 1960 and 1978 when the owner knows lead paint is present. Once a child under six lives in a covered unit or routinely spends ten or more hours a week there, the full set of notice, inspection, testing, remediation, turnover, and recordkeeping duties switches on. Local Law 31 of 2020 added mandatory independent XRF testing and tightened the deadlines. Owners who miss any of it face Class C immediately hazardous violations, civil penalties up to $1,500 per violation, and in some cases misdemeanor charges.

Which Buildings and Children Trigger the Law

For pre-1960 multiple dwellings, the law presumes all paint contains lead. You do not need a positive test to be on the hook. The presumption can be rebutted only through a sworn statement supported by testing from a certified inspector or risk assessor, and HPD decides whether the evidence is enough.¹ Buildings built between 1960 and 1978 are covered only when the owner actually knows lead paint is present. Owner-occupied single-family homes generally fall outside Local Law 1, though federal disclosure rules still apply to any pre-1978 housing.

The ten-hour threshold matters. It captures children who stay with grandparents, babysitters, or in shared-custody arrangements even when the child does not technically live at the address. If a child in that category is in the unit, every requirement activates for that apartment and for the building’s common areas.

The Annual Notice to Tenants

Every year between January 1 and January 16, owners of pre-1960 multiple dwellings must deliver a written notice to each unit asking whether a child under six lives there or spends significant time there. The same notice must go out at the signing of any new lease or renewal.² The notice must be in English and Spanish and follow the format approved by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Using a homemade form, or skipping the mailing entirely, is a misdemeanor carrying up to a $500 fine, six months in jail, or both, with a civil penalty up to $1,500 on top of that.

Yearly Visual Inspections

In every unit where a child of the covered age lives, and in the building’s common areas, the owner must perform a visual investigation at least once a year. The inspection has to look for peeling paint, chewable surfaces with teeth marks, deteriorated subsurfaces, and friction or impact surfaces where paint may be wearing down. In practice that means checking window channels, door frames, stair railings, and hallway walls.³

The yearly cadence is a floor. Inspections must happen more frequently if the owner knows about a condition likely to create a hazard, a tenant reports a concern, or HPD issues a violation.

Independent XRF Testing Under Local Law 31

Local Law 31 added a testing requirement that goes beyond anything a visual check can catch. By August 9, 2025, or within one year of a child under six coming to live in a covered unit, whichever is sooner, the owner must have the unit and common areas tested using an X-ray fluorescence analyzer. The testing threshold is 0.5 mg/cm², and results must be reported to HPD.¹

The inspector must be EPA-certified and independent of both the building owner and any contractor hired to perform remediation. Owners cannot use their own employees or their remediation contractor to run the XRF. That independence rule closes a loophole in the old regime, where the person who stood to gain from a clean reading could also be the one taking it.

Fixing What You Find

When a visual inspection or an XRF test identifies lead paint, the owner has to fix it, and the required fix depends on the surface:

Friction surfaces on doors and door frames: remove or permanently cover all lead paint.
Windows: remove the lead paint from friction surfaces, or install replacement window channels and slides.
Chewable surfaces showing teeth marks: strip the lead paint or cover with a hard, puncture-resistant encapsulant approved for that purpose and applied by a certified contractor.
Peeling paint anywhere in the unit: stabilize it, and repair any underlying cause such as a leak.
Bare floors, windowsills, and window wells: make them smooth and cleanable.

The smooth-and-cleanable rule targets the surfaces where rough textures trap lead dust that routine cleaning cannot pull out, and where young children are most likely to put their hands.¹

Who Can Do the Work

How remediation gets done matters as much as whether it gets done. Under NYC Administrative Code § 27-2056.11, when an owner is correcting an HPD violation the work must be performed by a firm certified for lead abatement under EPA regulations. Workers must follow safety standards at least as strict as those the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene requires for ordered abatements, including temporary relocation of occupants when the job cannot be done safely with people in the unit.

For other lead-disturbing work that is not tied to a violation, workers must still have completed a lead-safe work practices course given by or on behalf of the EPA, HUD, or the city. When more than 100 square feet of lead paint will be disturbed, the full abatement-level certification requirements apply. The federal Renovation, Repair, and Painting rule runs alongside the city rules and flatly prohibits open-flame burning and the use of power tools without HEPA exhaust control.⁴ Plastic sheeting must isolate the work area, and dust clearance testing is required after every job.

Turnover Between Tenants

When a tenant moves out of a unit in a pre-1960 building, the owner must have the unit inspected for lead hazards before anyone else moves in, regardless of whether the incoming tenant has children. The inspection must be performed by someone independent of the owner, and it must use an XRF analyzer. If the analyzer is not used, the owner has to document why and report that explanation to HPD along with the results.⁵

Before the new lease begins, the owner must also complete a specific set of remediation tasks:

Fix all lead paint hazards and any underlying defects, such as leaks or water damage.
Make all bare floors, windowsills, and window wells smooth and cleanable.
Remove or permanently cover lead paint on friction surfaces of all doors and door frames, which often means replacing the door and frame entirely.
Remove or permanently cover lead paint on window friction surfaces, or install replacement window channels and slides.

Skipping these steps produces a Class C immediately hazardous violation on its own, independent of whether a hazard actually remains.

Dust Clearance After the Work

After any lead remediation, a third-party technician must collect surface wipe samples from floors, windowsills, and window troughs and send them to an accredited laboratory. The unit cannot be considered safe for occupancy until the results come back under the action levels:

Floors: 5 μg/ft²
Windowsills: 40 μg/ft²
Window troughs: 100 μg/ft²

These are the NYC thresholds, and as of January 12, 2026, they are also the federal standard.⁶

Records You Must Keep

Under NYC Administrative Code § 27-2056.17, owners must retain all lead-related records for at least ten years from the date the work was completed. That includes annual notice forms, visual inspection results, XRF reports, remediation logs, and dust clearance results. Tenants must receive written results of any investigation along with a copy of the inspection report, and when a building changes hands the records transfer to the new owner.

HPD can request the file at any time during a building audit. If you cannot produce it, the agency can assume the required work was never done. Owners who seek dismissal of certain violations must submit records covering the previous three years and pay $1,000 for each year within the ten-year retention window for which records are missing.⁷

Penalties and HPD Enforcement

HPD monitors compliance and issues Class C immediately hazardous violations for lead paint conditions that go unaddressed. Once a Class C lead violation is issued, the owner has 21 days from the date of service to correct it before HPD can pursue civil penalties in Housing Court.⁸

The exposure breaks down by category:

Failing to send annual notices or to investigate: misdemeanor carrying up to a $500 fine, six months in jail, or both, plus a civil penalty up to $1,500 per violation.
Failing to comply with audit or inspection orders: Class C violation and a civil penalty up to $1,000.
Failing to complete turnover requirements: Class C immediately hazardous violation.

Penalties run per violation, so hazards in multiple units stack quickly.¹ If the owner still does not act, HPD’s Emergency Repair Program can send contractors in to do the work, and the Department of Finance bills the owner for the full cost of repairs plus administrative fees.⁹

Federal Disclosure Rules Still Apply

Local Law 1 is not the whole picture. Under the federal Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act, any landlord leasing a unit in a pre-1978 building must give the tenant a completed lead disclosure form, any known records or reports about lead hazards in the property, and the EPA pamphlet “Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home” before the lease is signed.¹⁰ The pamphlet was updated in January 2026 to reflect the new dust-lead action levels.¹¹

Federal “target housing” is broader than what Local Law 1 covers: all pre-1978 housing, with narrow exceptions for housing exclusively for the elderly or persons with disabilities and for zero-bedroom units, unless a child under six lives or is expected to live there.¹² An NYC landlord with a 1970 building may not trigger Local Law 1 obligations without actual knowledge of lead paint, but federal disclosure duties still apply at every lease signing.

1
Housing Preservation & Development. Lead-Based Paint
2
Justia. New York City Administrative Code 27-2056.4 – Owners Responsibility To Notify Occupants And To Investigate
3
American Legal Publishing Corporation. New York City Administrative Code 27-2056.4 – Owners Responsibility to Notify Occupants and to Investigate
4
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Renovation, Repair and Painting Program: Work Practices
5
New York City Administrative Code. New York City Administrative Code 27-2056.8 – Violation in a Dwelling Unit Upon or Prior to Turnover
6
Federal Register. Reconsideration of the Dust-Lead Hazard Standards and Dust-Lead Post-Abatement Clearance Levels
7
NYC Rules. Lead Based Paint Enforcement and Remediation
8
Housing Preservation & Development. Clear Violations
9
Housing Preservation & Development. Emergency Repair Program (ERP)
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 4852d – Disclosure of Information Concerning Lead Upon Transfer of Residential Property
11
US EPA. Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home
12
US EPA. What Is Target Housing?