Public urination complaints in New York City have climbed nearly 50% so far in 2026, and a pair of lawmakers want to make the offense hurt a lot more than it currently does.

Through April 12, the city logged 316 complaints of public urination, up from 214 during the same stretch in 2025. That’s a 47.7% jump in just over three months. The numbers come from the NYPD’s Quality of Life report, which tracks these offenses across all five boroughs, and they’ve landed hard at City Hall.

The spike’s got a twist.

Public drinking complaints actually fell during the same window, dropping from 685 to 570, a decline of roughly 17%. More people are urinating in public; fewer are drinking there. Nobody in the legislature is explaining that particular reversal.

City Council Member Joann Ariola, who sits on the Council Health Committee, isn’t interested in waiting for an explanation. She wants the law changed. Under the current system, per the New York State Unified Court System, police handle most public urination incidents as non-criminal administrative code violations. The typical result is a court summons and a $50 fine. That’s it.

Ariola says that’s not working.

“The only way to bring this situation under control is to move public urination back to being a criminal offense rather than a civil infraction,” Ariola said. “These offenders are exposing themselves in public and creating health hazards, and they’re only getting a slap on the wrist ticket, if they get anything at all, if they get caught.”

Deterrence. That’s what she says the $50 ticket can’t provide.

Brooklyn Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny is carrying a bill in Albany that would raise the penalty for public urination or defecation in the city to as much as $500. Whether the legislature moves on it this session hasn’t been resolved. Brook-Krasny’s proposal would make the financial consequences ten times sharper than what’s currently on the books.

The city’s approach to these offenses wasn’t always this lenient. In 2015, the NYPD issued over 150,000 criminal summonses for quality-of-life offenses including public urination, littering, and unreasonable noise. That year alone, nearly 20,000 people received criminal summonses specifically for urinating in public. City Council members at the time argued those criminal records were disproportionate to the offenses involved, and the city eventually decriminalized them, pushing public urination into the administrative code and away from the criminal justice system entirely.

Ariola wants that shift reversed. The 316 complaints filed through April 12 suggest the decriminalization hasn’t discouraged the behavior.

The New York City Department of Health hasn’t released updated data on the public health dimensions of the uptick. A department spokesperson said “data will be posted when it becomes available.”

The consequences aren’t theoretical for city residents. Urine pools in subway stations, under overpasses, along building walls, and in the alleyways of densely packed neighborhoods from the Bronx to Bay Ridge. It’s not just the smell. It’s a documented sanitation problem that the 311 system fields complaints about regularly, and one that compounds in areas with limited public restroom access. As amNewYork’s coverage of the surge has noted, the complaints don’t distribute evenly across the city.

The legislative math on Brook-Krasny’s bill isn’t certain. The state legislature has 12 months left in the 2026 session to act, and quality-of-life enforcement bills have a long history of stalling in Albany even when they have strong local backing. Ariola’s push to recriminalize the offense at the city level faces a City Council that hasn’t signaled it’s ready to revisit the 2015 decriminalization framework.

What’s clear right now: 316 complaints in roughly three months puts 2026 on track to blow past the prior year’s totals. The 214 complaints from the same period in 2025 already represented a city dealing with a persistent enforcement gap. At 47.7% above that baseline, the numbers are going in the wrong direction, and two elected officials have proposals ready.