Dirty Yard or Alley

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Property owners must keep areas on their property visible from a public street or sidewalk clean. This rule applies even if someone else caused the dirty condition.

Areas include:

  • Yards
  • Courts
  • Alleys
  • Air shafts
  • Areaways
  • Lots with a building or building foundation

What You Can Report

You can report a dirty area on private property with:

  • Loose trash and stray garbage bags
  • Broken glass
  • Storage of excessive materials

You must be able to see the dirty conditions from a public street or sidewalk.

What Happens Next

DSNY will inspect the location during the enforcement routing time for the address. If the condition exists at the time of inspection, DSNY may issue a summons to the property owner but will not clean it up.

You can report yards or alleys visible from the street where people repeatedly litter. You can’t report a one-time occurrence of littering.

Please note that if you're a property owner, you are responsible for keeping areas on your property visible from the street clean. You're responsible even if you reported littering. You may get a ticket for trash you should have cleared but didn't.

What You Need

You must provide:

  • Timeframe and the days of the week when littering occurs
  • Type of material being littered

Call 311 to report the problem.

What Happens Next

A Department of Sanitation (DSNY) enforcement agent will watch the location during the timeframe you provided. If the agent sees someone littering, they will give them a violation.

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