I received an HPD violation for mice, roaches or rats. What now?

What the code says

Administrative Code §27-2017.4 states that the presence of cockroaches, mice or rats in any room of a dwelling unit in a multiple dwelling, or in a common area, constitutes an immediately hazardous violation, and that the date for correction is twenty-one days after service of the notice.

HPD's current Clear Violations page carries a Timeline for Violation Correction listing Class C lead-based paint, window guards, mold, and mice, cockroaches and rats at 21 days from date of service, and its Penalties and Fees page gives the same period. Note that HPD frames that table as the time an owner has to correct before civil penalties apply if sought in Housing Court.

The sequence

1. Read the notice properly, and read both dates. The correction date is when the cited condition must be corrected. The certification is due no later than five days after that. Your NOV prints both, along with the cited location and condition.
2. Start on access the same day. Access is an early point of failure with a short fuse. If the cited condition is inside an occupied apartment, everything depends on getting in. Contact the resident immediately, put the request in writing, and keep the record. Discovering on day eighteen that nobody has been able to get into the apartment is how a correctable violation becomes an uncorrected one.
3. Inspect before you treat. Identify the pest, the activity, the entry and passage points, and the moisture conditions. The required correction work is defined by what you find, and you cannot document work you never scoped.
4. Perform the required work. Remove pest debris, close entry and passage points, fit door sweeps where applicable, and repair the water sources. If pesticide is used, it cannot substitute for those measures and must be applied by a pest professional licensed by NYSDEC. What HPD actually requires you to do covers this in full.
5. If you cannot finish, apply for a postponement rather than certifying optimistically. The window is narrow. The application must be made in writing within the five days preceding the correction date, and HPD grants it at its sole discretion. Inability to gain access is one of the enumerated grounds, but an access-based application must include a description of the steps taken, the written notice sent to the tenant explaining the hazard and the need for access, proof of delivery of that notice by certified or registered mail, and an explanation of why access could not be gained. A granted postponement extends the correction date by no more than fourteen days.
6. Certify correctly and on time. Pest violations cannot be filed through eCertification. Use the pest Certification of Correction included with the Notice of Violation, or HPD's dedicated CIV 194 PEST form if you need a replacement. The certification is sworn and notarized, and it requires you to name the agent or employee who performed the work.

If the certification period has passed

You cannot simply file late, and the route depends on the violation's current status on HPDONLINE. If HPD has already reinspected and the physical condition has been observed corrected, the violation shows a status of Defect, and HPD describes a free documentation submission process for violations in that status. No Dismissal Request and no fee.

If the condition has not been observed corrected, a Dismissal Request with the applicable fee is required, together with HPD's AF-6 Pest Affidavit of Compliance and any other documentation HPD requires for removal. Clearing an overdue pest violation covers the whole route.

What to have in the file

The Notice of Violation. The complete access record, kept in two forms: ordinary operational logging for your own purposes, and, separately, the specific evidence a postponement application requires. Service records identifying the technician and the NYSDEC credential under which any pesticide was applied. What was found and where. What physical correction work was performed, with photographs before and after. The certification and its submission record.

A fuller model is on what should be in the file before you certify.

The common mistakes

Treating the exterminator's visit as the correction

It is one component, and the rules do not require it in every case. What they require is the physical work.

Certifying because the deadline arrived

The certification is sworn, and HPD may audit any certification submitted to it. Tenants are also notified when HPD receives a certification and may challenge it, which triggers an audit inspection. False certification carries substantial civil exposure, and the Housing Maintenance Code separately makes a false certification of an Article 4 violation a misdemeanor.

HPD says it reinspected nearly 63% of certified Class C violations overall in 2025. That does not establish a pest-specific audit rate, but it is a useful reminder that a Class C certification should be prepared as though the cited condition may be physically reinspected.

Finding out about the access problem too late to use the postponement

The application window is the five days before the correction date. An access problem discovered on day nineteen leaves no room to assemble certified-mail proof.

Correcting without certifying

The repair alone does not close the violation. Uncorrected Class C conditions can be referred to HPD's Emergency Repair Program, where the city may perform eligible work and bill the property through the Department of Finance. HPD notes that public procurement, contracting and wage rules may make such work significantly more expensive than an owner could arrange independently, and a past-due unpaid HPD repair charge becomes a tax lien against the property, bearing interest and subject to sale or foreclosure. You can see whether work orders are already open against a building on HPD Online, under the Charges tab.

One thing worth saying plainly

HPD has acknowledged in its own annual reports that the 21-day period may not be sufficient to completely eradicate an infestation, that it can take several treatments over the course of months, and that owners working in good faith may therefore produce inflated numbers of false certifications.

That tension is real, and the postponement process is what the statute provides for it. It exists precisely because corrections cannot always be completed on schedule, and it sits alongside a pest management program that continues after the violation work is closed. The correction deadline does not lower the standard for a sworn document.