Residential owners and managers in NYC will be bugged by another new regulation this year – pun intended.

The NY City Council passed legislation requiring residential properties to file the bedbug history for each of their properties electronically with HPD. In addition to filling this new electronic form with HPD, owners and managers will be required to post the same at a prominent place in the building OR provide the form with each new or renewal lease. An HPD-approved form on preventing, detecting, and removing bedbugs must be also included with either the posting or lease distribution.

According to the proposed legislation, multifamily owners and managers “shall attempt to obtain the bedbug infestation for the previous year for each dwelling unit from the tenant or owner,” including whether or not remediation was taken for an infestation. That said, landlords will not have to identify infested units in the HPD filing/posting – just denote the overall number of impacted units.

In addition, the department may employ staggered sub-cycles to collect electronic forms (like the current process for Facades) and must make the information public and available within 30 days of filing.

The law itself takes effect 180 days from passage, so HPD still has time to create and publish a standard electronic form, in addition to rules about enforcement. It’s safe to assume that failure to abide by this law will result in an HPD violation, but the violation class and any additional fines are yet to be determined.

Stay tuned for updates on this upcoming requirement, including when and how to file bedbug forms with HPD.