It’s an HPD heat season like none other starting October 1, 2026.

Based on comments in the Block-By-Block and Rental Ripoff reports, HPD inspectors are approaching complaints differently during this year’s heat season.

In the past, inspectors would arrive onsite to respond to a heat complaint – the “primary complaint”. If the complaint was resolved satisfactorily (no violations issued), any subsequent complaints (complaints from the same building, but made after the primary) would be closed. Inspectors would only visit duplicate units if they were unable to assess conditions of the primary complaint unit.

Starting this heat season, inspectors “will be required to attempt an inspection for all apartments that file non-anonymous complaints. Complaints from multiple apartments in a building will no longer be considered duplicates of each other.”

Some things worth noting:

• Only non-anonymous complaints will get individual inspections. We assume this means unit-based complaints, as all HPD complaints are anonymous and not recorded to a specific individual (but are often connected to a unit location)
• Multiple complaints from the same unit will still count as duplicates
• HPD will monitor response times to heat complaints, as this could be a significant increase in inspection volume. The department still wants to balance the needs of swift responses against improving the current process

What Can Managers Do?

It’s more important now than ever before to ensure you’re on top of every complaint.

Teams using SiteCompli and InCheck tools can:

• Make sure automatic alerts for new complaints are sent to the right people on your team
• Take the next step – automatically trigger Tasks to record details onsite and investigate before the inspector arrives
• Use built-in reporting to track complaint and violation statistics for this heat season, including conversion rates at each property

Sneak Peek: The Annual Violations Report

SiteCompli’s annual Violations Report is underway, and part of this year’s data will focus on heat complaints.

We’ll share more details on:

• Which borough has the highest complaint total
• Which month accounts for the most complaints during heat season
• How that stacks up against violations

Stay tuned for the Report this October, and make sure you’ve got your HPD plans in motion (ongoing alerts, automatic Task assignment to your team to investigate) before the season starts. Talk to your Customer Success Manager or support@sitecompli.com for any tips or best practices.