A recent incident in a Brooklyn apartment building highlighted the imporatnce of installing carbon monoxide alarms in residential buildings.
Tenants were alterted to a potentially lethal carbon monoxide problem early on a Sunday morning when an alarm went off in an apartment. WHen firefighters arrived in response to the alarm, they found that the monoxide levels were dangerously high and evacuated the building. It was later determined that the cause of the leak was a defective bioler.
The City Law (Local Law 7 of 2004) requires that all apartments in New York City to have carbon monoxide detectors installed. In addition, in 2010, a State law, commonly referred to as "Amanda's Law" went into effect an requires carbon monoide detectors to be installed in all new ans existing apartments through the State. Both the City ans STate laws require the owners to install the carbon monoxide alarms ans require them to be maintained by the tenants.
The City law specifically provides that owners may charge tenants $25.00 as reimbursement for newly installed carbon monoxide detectors and may also charge tenants for the cost of a new detector "as a result of such occupant's failure to maintain such device or wher such device had been lost or damaged by the occupant." The state law is silent regarding whether an owner can be reimbursed for the cost of the installation.
Detailed information of the City's law relating to carbon monoxide detectors can be found on HPD's website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/homeowners/carbon_monoxide.shtml