Guide for owners and boards
For landlords, managing agents and co-op boards
A tenant or shareholder has died in the building, or there has been violence in a unit or a hallway. You have neighbors asking questions, a super waiting for instructions and a unit you may not be entitled to enter. This page is about the order to do things in.
Phone answered at every hour, weekends and holidays included
The first forty-eight hours
Confirm the unit has been released
Ask the officer on scene, or phone the police department that responded. Get the incident number.
Work out who can authorize entry
A living tenant can. After a death, it is the next of kin or whoever is acting for the estate. If you cannot find either, speak to your attorney before opening the door for a contractor.
Protect the common areas
Odor in a hallway or fluid through a ceiling is a building problem as well as a unit problem. Common areas are yours to deal with at once.
Tell both insurers
The building's carrier and, through the family, the occupant's own. Ask each what it wants documented before anything is removed.
Book the company and the building
Reserve the service elevator, tell the company about parking and loading, and ask for its certificate of insurance if the building requires one from outside contractors.
Rules that apply because it is a rental or a multi-unit building
Habitability
New York's Real Property Law 235-b has every residential landlord warrant that the premises and the common areas are fit to live in, with nothing in them dangerous to life, health or safety. A contaminated stairwell or a unit leaking into the one below cannot be left.
Asbestos
The state's homeowner exemption covers only an owner working alone on a single-family house they live in. It does not reach rented property. If old floor tile or pipe insulation has to come out, give that part to a licensed asbestos contractor.
Lead paint
The EPA's renovation rule covers paid work that disturbs paint in housing built before 1978, and it applies to rentals. Ask whether the firm cutting out plaster or trim is certified.
Belongings, and who pays
Do not clear a deceased tenant's possessions yourself, however bad the unit looks. Property belongs to the estate. The cleanup company can separate what is contaminated from what is not, photograph both, and leave the rest for the family or the estate's representative.
If the cause was a crime and the building paid for the cleanup, note that since November 2025 New York lets anyone who paid out of pocket apply to the Office of Victim Services, not only the person who lived there. Who pays explains the limits.
Keep one file: incident number, photographs, the company's written scope, the invoice and every email with the family. You will be asked for it more than once.
Questions from owners and boards
Do we have to tell the other tenants what happened?
Tell them what affects them: which areas are closed, when contractors will be in the building and when it will be finished. The details of a death are the family's to share.
Can the company work at night so fewer people see it?
Ask. Some will, and some buildings have rules about contractor hours that the board can waive.
The unit below has a stain on the ceiling. Is that part of the same job?
Treat it as part of the same problem and tell the company before it visits, so that it brings enough people and looks at both units.
Once the police hand the home back, phone
The person who answers works for an independent cleanup firm active in and around Yonkers. Put any question to them. Whether to hire them is up to you.
Phone answered at every hour, weekends and holidays included
Calls can be recorded. How that works: privacy, and how this service is paid.