Mount Vernon, NY Building Safety: Door Locking Hardware (2026)

City of Mount Vernon Code § 149-67, adopted in 1994 as Article XII of the Housing Code, requires every street, roof, passageway, court, yard or cellar entrance to a multiple dwelling with six or more apartments to be equipped with automatic self-closing and self-locking doors, kept locked at all times except when an attendant is on duty. The same buildings must have bells or buzzers at the main entrance to alert occupants to a person seeking entry, and an automatic release mechanism letting an occupant unlock the main entrance door from inside their own apartment.

Section 149-67B additionally requires an intercommunication system with voice communication and a release function in buildings erected or converted after November 1, 1994. Older buildings, those erected or converted before that date, had until May 1, 1995 to add the same self-closing doors, buzzers and release mechanism under § 149-67C, though the full intercom system there is triggered only if a majority of tenants request or consent to it in writing under § 149-67C(4). Section 149-67D requires all doors, locks, bells, buzzers, release mechanisms and intercom systems already in place, or later installed, to be kept in good working order continuously, which is the ongoing maintenance duty landlords are cited under most often.