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January 20, 2009
Storing Garbage in Rental Unit
Hi,
I recently rented an apartment in a small rental building (3 residential rentals and 1 commercial rental on the ground floor). The building does not have a location, either inside or outside, at which I can store garbage between pickups. I have lived in many rental apartments in New York, and there has always been either an area in the basement, or bins in front of the building for storing garbage before pick up. The super in my building told me that I should just leave my trash outside of my door, and that he would deal with it. While this is a very nice offer (esp. since I'm in a walk-up), I believe that he may be putting the trash into public trash cans to get rid of it, and I'd hate for him to get in trouble. In addition, I'm expecting a baby soon, and I'm not sure that I want to leave diaper trash in the common stairwell, even for a few hours.
My question is this - are NY landlords required to provide a storage area for garbage? Or, in such a small building, do I just have to keep excess bags in my apartment until trash day?
Thanks!
Comments
how often is trash collected where you are? here it's 3x a week. when I rented in a brownstone, we had a can downstairs but mostly we just took it straight to the curb on trash night.
also, you may want to consider a diaper genie
Posted by: Ringo at January 20, 2009 7:09 PM
Lots of buildings don't have designated garbage areas due to space issues or rodent issues and request that tenants put their garbage outside on garbage pickup days only.
In my opinion, putting garbage out just on garbage days is much better than having rodent infested, filthy garbage cans sitting outside your building 24 hours a day.
Of course in a perfect world every building has an energetic young superintendent happy to fight rats and clean up overflowing garbage cans, but this is far from a perfect world!
Posted by: IronBalls at January 20, 2009 9:47 PM
The Department of Sanitation's digest of codes can be found here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dsny/downloads/pdf/rules/digest/digest.pdf
Placing household trash in corner baskets is never allowed.
It is my belief that many years ago when many of these buildings were built there was daily pickup. Therefore there was never an issue with storage.
Posted by: SenatorStreet at January 21, 2009 9:54 AM
I don't remember daily pick-ups but I do remember that people did'nt have as much trash back then. Although building owners are required to have both an area designated for both regular trash and trash for recycling or risk being fined if reported, many do not which leaves far too many tenants in a quandry. If the tenant dumps the trash illegally in a street corner receptacle, they too can get fined if caught. I have seen Sanitation Ofiicers actually digging through household trash dumped in corner baskets looking for something in the trash that might identify the dumper. So if your super dumps your trash illegally, he won't get in trouble, you will.
Posted by: Chaka at January 21, 2009 11:42 AM
Thanks so much for all of your help.
Posted by: rooster at January 21, 2009 1:04 PM
You can look up your trash pick-up days on the Dept of Sanitation website:
http://gis.nyc.gov/gisapp/sn/sanitation.jsp
Your landlord IS required to provide a trash area, but if you push him on it, that's probably a sure-fire way to make sure your lease is not renewed when it comes up.
Posted by: brooklynblondie at January 21, 2009 4:01 PM
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