Schenectady, NY Rental Inspections: Tenant Complaint Process (2026)

Section 137-13 of the City Code requires the Code Enforcement Officer to review and investigate complaints alleging conditions or activities that fail to comply with the Uniform Code, the Energy Code, Chapter 137, or any other local law or regulation adopted for administering those codes. That reach covers rental housing conditions a tenant might report, from structural and fire-safety problems to unpermitted work, since the complaint intake process is not limited by the type of building involved. The section lays out the steps the Officer may take in responding, drawing on whichever are appropriate to the complaint: performing an inspection of the specific conditions or activities alleged to be in violation and documenting the results; if a violation is found, providing the property owner and any other responsible person with notice of the violation and an opportunity to abate, correct, or cure it, or proceeding under the enforcement and penalty provisions of § 137-15; issuing a stop-work order if appropriate; and, once a violation is corrected, performing a follow-up inspection, preparing a final written report on the correction, and filing it with the original complaint.

This complaint-driven inspection sits alongside the Officer's independently scheduled firesafety and property maintenance inspections under § 137-12, which already run on fixed 12- or 36-month cycles for different building types; a tenant complaint under § 137-13 can trigger an inspection outside that fixed schedule whenever a specific condition is reported. All complaints received and the resulting investigations must be kept as part of the Code Enforcement Officer's permanent official records under § 137-14, which are open for public inspection during normal business hours.