Failure to Certify Correction: The $5,000 Penalty With a Narrow Door

What the penalty is today

Under Administrative Code 28-219.1 and 1 RCNY 102-05 (as amended effective December 18, 2024), a person who fails to submit certification of correction of an immediately hazardous violation that was issued at a construction site and poses a threat of imminent danger to public safety or property pays a civil penalty of $5,000 in penalties to the Department.

Two limits define the current rule. First, it applies only at construction sites - an occupied building with no active construction does not accrue this penalty for an ordinary Class 1 summons. Second, it does not apply to one- to four-family dwellings at all.

What changed in 2022 - and why old advice is wrong

Before Local Law 50 of 2022, section 28-219.1 reached any immediately hazardous condition, with a penalty of $1,500 for one- and two-family homes and $3,000 to $5,000 for other buildings. Expediters' handouts and the Department's own older AEU-2 instructions still circulate with those figures. Local Law 50 removed the minimum, exempted one- to four-family homes, and confined the penalty to construction sites; the rule was then set at the flat $5,000. Advice quoting the old tiers is quoting a repealed schedule.

How the penalty arrives: the AEUHAZ notice

The penalty is imposed through a separate Notice of Violation, coded AEUHAZ, issued when no acceptable Certificate of Correction has been submitted for the underlying Class 1 summons. The Department reinspects the condition within 60 days (Administrative Code 28-219.2). The owner or respondent may challenge the AEUHAZ notice within 30 days - recognized grounds include a Certificate of Correction already approved, the underlying summons dismissed or downgraded at the hearing, or the one- to four-family exemption. Since December 15, 2025, challenges and civil penalty payments for AEUHAZ violations are submitted in DOB NOW: Safety.

The payment gate

Until the penalty is paid, the property is frozen in three ways under 28-219.1: no permit and no certificate of occupancy shall be issued, no stop work order may be rescinded, and - since Local Law 126 of 2021 - no Certificate of Correction for the very violation that triggered the penalty can be accepted. The unpaid penalty blocks the paperwork that would close the underlying problem. One carve-out exists: permits for emergency and unsafe-building work under Articles 215 and 216 are not blocked.

What to do when a Class 1 lands at a work site

For a board running a capital project, the practical rules are:

• Treat every Class 1 summons at the site as a same-week item: under 1 RCNY 102-01, certification of correction for a Class 1 violation must reach the Department forthwith.
• Make the contractor's contract answer for certification deadlines - the penalty is assessed against the property, whoever was holding the tools.
• Watch for the AEUHAZ notice itself; the 30-day challenge window runs from its date, and a meritorious challenge (correction already approved, summons downgraded) is lost if it is filed late.
• If the penalty is owed, pay it before scheduling the sign-offs and correction filings it gates.

DOB Scan checks DOB NOW and the ECB/OATH records for monitored buildings every day, so a new Class 1 summons - and the certification deadline it starts - never goes unnoticed. Run a free building check.