Mold and water damage help for Yonkers buildings
Yonkers starts where Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Park end, and New York City's housing rules do not follow you across that line. Tell us what you are looking at and we connect you with the New York company the job needs.
Which side of the city line
Inside New York City: the Bronx
Past the line: Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham, New Rochelle
The ten-unit bar is a city law, so it stops at the line. Each of these places has its own building department, and the state's two-license rule still applies over ten square feet. Section 933's exemptions still apply here, among them an owner working on their own home, and an owner or managing agent using full-time staff on a building of more than four units, unless they do mold work for the public.
Common questions
Do Bronx housing rules apply to a Yonkers building?
No. Yonkers is a separate Westchester city with its own Department of Housing and Buildings, so a Yonkers owner deals with that office and the state codes it enforces.
Can I get help with a Yonkers property and a Bronx one?
Send one request per address. The state's mold licensing law is the same on both sides of the line, though the local code office that answers a complaint is different.
The four jobs in Yonkers
Match the job to what is in front of you: a written assessment, cleanup against a plan, drying after water, or an answer to a code notice.
Local notes for Yonkers
Yonkers has 85,006 housing units, and 68,903 of them were built before 1980. That is a lot of original roofs, risers and window heads with decades to start leaking. More than half of households rent (43,908 of 81,645 occupied homes), and 51.2 percent of units sit in buildings of five or more apartments, so one wet wall can belong to more than one household.
Water also comes in from outside. Yonkers maintains a list of flood damaged properties and counts the Nepperhan Valley, the Hudson, the Bronx River Valley and Tibbetts Brook among its flood prone areas, which puts basements and ground-floor apartments in play.
Who answers for the building is a Yonkers question. Housing and building complaints go to the city's own Department of Housing and Buildings, not to any New York City agency, and its Housing Code Enforcement division inspects apartment houses and other multiple residences.
- Median year built
- 1958
- Old buildings
- 26.6 percent of housing units built in 1939 or earlier
- Renters
- 53.8 percent of occupied units are renter occupied
- Larger buildings
- 51.2 percent of units are in buildings of five or more units
Source: American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 5-year estimates, US Census Bureau
Who handles it here
In Yonkers mold is handled as a housing and building code matter by the city's own Department of Housing and Buildings, whose Housing Code Enforcement division enforces the state Uniform Code, the Yonkers Housing and Building Maintenance Code and the Multiple Residence Law, and New York City's HPD rules do not apply there. Source: City of Yonkers Department of Housing and Buildings, New York State Senate, 2025 Property Maintenance Code of New York State, New York State Department of State
What makes buildings wet
The city told the county hazard plan that it keeps a list of flood damaged properties and named the Nepperhan River Valley (Saw Mill River), the Hudson River, the Bronx River Valley and Tibbetts Brook among its flood prone areas, with 239 repetitive loss properties on record. Source: City of Yonkers annex, Westchester County Hazard Mitigation Plan