Heat and hot water violations turn sharply higher every October.
New York City's heat season starts October 1. HPD's heat and hot water violations, counted by month from August 7, 2023 through September 24, 2026, turn sharply at that date. October runs 57.2% above September. January, the peak month, runs 4.4 times the September floor. The rise coincides with the start of heat season. On its own, this pattern does not show that the season causes it.
Violations by calendar month, all years 2023 through September 24, 2026 combined. September 6,628, October 10,419, January 29,276 (the peak).
The single largest one-month jump is Sep-to-Oct itself, +57.2%, right at the heat-season start date. The climb continues past it at a decelerating rate: Oct-to-Nov +82.4%, Nov-to-Dec +28.3%, Dec-to-Jan +20.0% to the peak. A step on October 1, then a longer, slower climb to January.
The October turn, year by year
A pooled average across every year in this series can be carried by one unusual winter. Broken out one calendar year at a time, September against October, that is not what happened here.
| Year | September | October | October vs. September |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,702 | 3,461 | +103.3% |
| 2024 | 1,614 | 3,015 | +86.8% |
| 2025 | 1,754 | 3,943 | +124.8% |
| 2026 (partial year) | 1,558 | not yet | not yet |
October ran above September in every one of the 3 complete years in our copy, not just in the pooled average: 2023 (+103.3%), 2024 (+86.8%), 2025 (+124.8%).
The control group: categories with no seasonal mechanism
Vermin, water leaks, and electrical conditions have no reason to turn with the heat-season calendar the way a heat or hot water outage does. Measured the same way, September against October, all three:
| Category | September | October | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heat and hot water | 6,628 | 10,419 | +57.2% |
| Vermin and pests | 24,249 | 20,494 | -15.5% |
| Water leaks | 22,537 | 18,883 | -16.2% |
| Electrical | 5,815 | 4,513 | -22.4% |
None of the three has a seasonal mechanism. All three stay close to flat from September to October (vermin and pests -15.5%, water leaks -16.2%, electrical -22.4%), against heat's +57.2%. The October turn is isolated to heat and hot water, not a citywide rise in every violation category that month.
The full monthly series, with its share of the total
Each month's count against all 158,693 violations in the period, the denominator behind the chart above.
| Month | Violations | Share of the period |
|---|---|---|
| Sep | 6,628 | 4.2% |
| Oct | 10,419 | 6.6% |
| Nov | 19,002 | 12.0% |
| Dec | 24,388 | 15.4% |
| Jan | 29,276 | 18.4% |
| Feb | 21,573 | 13.6% |
| Mar | 14,180 | 8.9% |
| Apr | 9,839 | 6.2% |
| May | 6,742 | 4.2% |
| Jun | 5,516 | 3.5% |
| Jul | 5,048 | 3.2% |
| Aug | 6,082 | 3.8% |
The comparison, stated plainly
This compares one calendar month against another inside the same category, never against a different violation type: every HPD Housing Maintenance Code violation whose description matches heat or hot water, all three classes combined, every year in this series folded into twelve month buckets. Against the 2,961,943 HPD violations in our copy through September 24, 2026, heat and hot water violations are 5.4% of the total.
Year over year
The October-to-January climb is not one unusual year averaged into the total; it recurs inside each year we hold. 2026 is a partial year, since our copy runs through September 24, 2026.
| Year | Violations |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 19,954 |
| 2024 | 46,434 |
| 2025 | 54,088 |
| 2026 (partial year) | 38,217 |
Of the 158,693 heat and hot water violations in this period, 149,537 are Class C, immediately hazardous. Another 6,476 are Class B and 2,679 are Class A.
How this is counted
Violations whose HPD description text matches "heat" or "hot water" (case-insensitive), the same definition already used for the Heat and Hot Water category elsewhere on this site. A text match, not an exact statute classification. Every year in this series (2023 onward) is summed into the twelve month buckets. The year-by-year counts behind that sum are in the table above.
Quote this finding
Quote it directly. The sentence below carries its own denominator and date, which is what a fact-checker will ask for:
“October heat and hot water violations run 57.2% above September across 158,693 New York City violations, and October ran above September in every one of the 3 complete years measured.” ViolationScout, September 26, 2026
Method: every heat and hot water violation in our copy of HPD’s data, grouped by calendar month, with a control group of three categories that have no seasonal mechanism. The data is public on NYC Open Data. Ask us for the query behind any figure here: press@violationscout.com.
Cite this page
ViolationScout, NYC heat violations spike every October, our copy of HPD Housing Maintenance Code Violations (NYC Open Data, dataset wvxf-dwi5), frozen when published and not updated since. Figures through September 24, 2026, read on September 26, 2026. https://violationscout.com/research/heat-season-spike
Violations whose HPD description text matches "heat" or "hot water" (case-insensitive), the same definition already used for the Heat and Hot Water category elsewhere on this site. A text match, not an exact statute classification. Source: NYC Open Data. How every figure here is counted: /methodology.
158,693 heat and hot water violations, pulled September 26, 2026. How long heat repairs take to certify, against the date the notice sets, is on the heat certification page. What to do about one heat violation, by status, season and borough: the heat guide. This season, citywide counts, ViolationScout.
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