Are New York Hotels and Short-Term Rentals Required to Have CO Detectors?

New York's carbon monoxide detection requirements for hotels and short-term rentals flow from two interlocking legal frameworks. At the state level, Amanda's Law, enacted as Chapter 367 of the Laws of 2009 and codified at Executive Law Section 378(5-a), requires all one- and two-family dwellings and multiple dwellings to be equipped with operable CO detectors wherever appliances, devices, or systems that may emit carbon monoxide are present, or where an attached garage exists. Under the statute, "multiple dwelling" explicitly includes hotels, motels, apartment hotels, lodging houses, rooming houses, and boarding houses. Amanda's Law took effect statewide on February 22, 2010, and its requirements are implemented through the New York State Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code (19 NYCRR Parts 1220 and 1225).

Properties in New York City operate under an additional layer: the NYC Administrative Code and rules administered by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the Department of Buildings (DOB), and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) impose supplemental obligations for Class B multiple dwellings, the classification that covers hotels and transient lodging.

Read the subdivision number carefully, because the one immediately before it is also about lodging and is not about carbon monoxide. Executive Law Section 378(5) is "Standards for hotels, motels and lodging houses" and requires a notice posted in a prominent place in each guest room giving the nearest exits and fire alarms, what to do when a fire or smoke detector sounds, and what to do if fire or smoke develops. It is a real duty an operator owes, and it says nothing about carbon monoxide. The detector mandate is 5-a. A citation to 378(5) in a carbon monoxide context points at the wrong obligation rather than at nothing.

Amanda's Law covers all "multiple dwellings" in New York State where CO-emitting conditions exist, and the statute's definition of "multiple dwelling" explicitly includes hotels, motels, apartment hotels, tourist houses, lodging houses, rooming houses, and boarding houses. Short-term rental operators in New York are covered under the same framework: single- or two-family homes offered for short-term rental are subject to the residential provisions of Amanda's Law, while STR operations in multi-unit buildings fall within the multiple dwelling definition. New York City properties are additionally subject to NYC Administrative Code requirements: Class B multiple dwellings, which encompass transient hotels and lodging, must comply with both state requirements and NYC-specific rules enforced by HPD, DOB, and FDNY.

Hotel operators and short-term rental hosts in New York bear responsibility for installing, maintaining, and replacing CO detection equipment in all covered units. Executive Law § 378(5-a) requires an operable carbon monoxide detector "of such manufacture, design and installation standards as are established by the council", and reaches a hotel by naming one: its definition of multiple dwelling lists hotel, apartment hotel, lodging house, rooming house, boarding house and tourist house among others. The trigger is written at unit level and is worth reading twice, because it is narrower than a building-wide test: detectors are "required only where the dwelling unit has appliances, devices or systems that may emit carbon monoxide or has an attached garage".

In New York City, owners of Class B multiple dwellings, including hotels and transient lodging properties, must provide and install at least one approved, operational CO alarm within each dwelling unit, or alternatively install a line-operated zoned CO detection system throughout the building in accordance with NYC Department of Buildings rules. Owners of NYC multiple dwellings must also keep records of installation and maintenance and make those records available upon request to HPD, DOB, FDNY, or DOHMH.

Under the Uniform Code, adopted at 19 NYCRR Part 1225, CO alarms must be maintained in an operative condition at all times. Alarms that become defective must be replaced or repaired promptly. For new hotel construction or major renovation where commercial building power is available, alarms must be hardwired to building wiring with battery backup; battery-only devices are not permitted in those circumstances. In existing hotels, battery-operated or direct-plug alarms remain an acceptable option where the building wiring configuration does not require hardwired installation. Installing CO detection is considered best practice for STR hosts even where no CO trigger condition formally applies.

New York's Uniform Code requires CO alarms to be listed to Underwriters Laboratories standard UL 2034 or Canadian Standards Association standard CSA 6.19 and installed in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.

For new buildings (post-January 1, 2008) and new construction generally, alarms must receive primary power from building wiring when served from a commercial source, with battery backup upon interruption of primary power; wiring must be permanent and without a disconnecting switch. Battery-only alarms are acceptable where no commercial or on-site power source is available. Combination CO and smoke alarms are permitted when each hazard type produces a distinct alarm signal.

Placement, and New York does not use the shape most states use. Executive Law § 378(5-a) sets the trigger and then delegates the standard: alarms of "such manufacture, design and installation standards as are established by the council", meaning the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council. The Council's rule splits by construction date rather than by an exception. As the Department of Health summarises it, in a Group R occupancy or multiple dwelling built on or after 1 January 2008 an alarm goes in each dwelling or sleeping unit where a carbon monoxide source is located, on each story of a multi-storey unit having a sleeping area or a source, and in each unit on the same storey as a source; a building built before that date answers a separate and shorter list. Where more than one alarm is required, they are hardwired to the building wiring and interconnected.

Two cautions on that paragraph, stated rather than buried. The Department of Health document is expressly a summary of the Uniform Code and not the code text, and the 2020 Fire Code of New York State could not be opened from here: codes.iccsafe.org serves a 549-character shell for its chapter 9, up.codes carries no New York jurisdiction view, and dos.ny.gov answers with a 58-character body to curl and through Wayback alike. So the construction-date structure above is reliable as to shape and should be checked against the code text before an operator relies on a specific storey or unit count.

What this page will not do is import the model code's sleeping-unit exception, which is what the previous version of this section did. New York's own instrument does not contain "outside each separate sleeping area in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping unit", and the model provision that does, IFC § 915.2.2, conditions that placement on two things at once: no fuel-burning appliance in the unit or its attached bathroom, and the unit not being served by a forced-air furnace. Quoting half of a test that belongs to a different code is worse than quoting none of it.

Statewide, enforcement of Amanda's Law is carried out by local code enforcement officials and building departments, which have authority to inspect and issue violations for non-compliant properties. In New York City, enforcement authority is distributed among HPD, DOB, FDNY, and DOHMH, all of which may issue violations for failure to install or maintain CO detectors. NYC owners of multiple dwellings must file a Certificate of Satisfactory Installation with HPD's Code Enforcement borough office within ten days of installing CO detectors. Short-term rental operators outside of New York City are subject to local building and fire code enforcement in their municipality. Guests who find missing or inoperable CO alarms should report the issue to the property operator; complaints may be escalated to the relevant local code enforcement authority or, in NYC, to 311.

The penalty is not in Section 378 at all. Section 378 states the installation standards; Executive Law Section 382(2) supplies the consequence for a Uniform Code violation, and it runs by the day. For the first one hundred eighty days the exposure is a fine of not more than $1,000 per day of violation, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both. For the next one hundred eighty days a minimum appears: not less than $25 and not more than $1,000 per day. Thereafter the minimum rises again, to not less than $50 and not more than $1,000 per day. The maximum never moves; what changes is the floor, so a violation left uncorrected stops being a discretionary nothing and becomes a guaranteed daily charge. Two figures often attached to hotels belong elsewhere in Section 378: the $250 maximum is in subdivision 5-c and applies to solid fuel burning heating appliances, and subdivision 5-d is the commercial buildings and restaurants requirement, which states a duty and no fine. In New York City, failure to provide or maintain a CO detector is a Class B violation, carrying civil penalties ranging from $25 to $100 plus $10 per day per violation until the condition is certified as corrected. Failure to post required notices is a Class A violation carrying civil penalties up to $50.