In a city of over a million inhabitants, there are an alarming number of uninvited guests who scurry, lurk and jump. Everyone knows them: rats.
“We’re seeing a rat epidemic in New York City,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told Our Town in mid-October. “We’re being inundated with reports.” In the month of October alone, through Thursday, more than 2,650 complaints related to rats and mice were called to 311, city data showed. Already this year, cumulative sightings had hit a decade high of 16,000 by the end of July, compared to 2,000 the year before, Fox5 reported.
But that number could soon level out, thanks in part to a package of anti-rat bills passed by City Council on Thursday. Two of the new bills, introduced by councilors Shaun Abreu and Chi Ossé, require the Department of Health and Mental Health (DOHMH) to create “rat reduction zones” by April next year and then require the agency to publish “a yearbook issues report on the success of rat control measures” in these areas.
Another requires buildings to store their trash in “rodent-proof bins” for at least two years if they have accumulated two or more rodent-related upkeeps or health code violations.
A fourth and final law sponsored by Chelsea Councilor Erik Bottcher requires building project applicants to provide proof that they have hired an exterminator to expel rats before being granted a work permit if 50% or more of the floor area of the building will be under construction or over 50%. is to be demolished; if the floor area of a building is increased by more than 25% of the existing area; or if a complete demolition is sought.
“For good actors, which fortunately the majority of builders are, this will only perpetuate what they are already doing. Good actors develop and execute a rat reduction plan,” Levine said of the bill. “But there are too many builders who make compromises here.”
A long time is coming
Levine originally promoted the building-related legislation during the city council’s final session, when he represented a northern section of the Upper West Side through Washington Heights. This time he has teamed up with Bottcher.
“People aren’t going to want to live here — they’re not going to want to work here or come here — if they see rats all the time,” Bottcher said during a Thursday morning news conference on the steps of City Hall. It is his first bill to pass the city council since he took office earlier this year.
That morning, City Council members directed some of their comments to two people dressed as rat protesters who stood cooperatively beside them. “Rats may be our neighbors, but they’re not our friends,” said Abreu, who represents Levine’s former district.
The rodent problem may have been exacerbated by the pandemic. But a construction boom, “undoubtedly a good thing,” Levine said, also likely played a role.
“A lot of times, if you’re renovating an older building or digging a foundation for a newer building, you can basically dig rat holes, which the rats will then send out into the neighborhood,” Levine explained. “And it’s really a hardship for the surrounding community.”
When Bottcher’s new law goes into effect in six months, “improvements will be felt,” Levine said — especially by those living near ongoing or upcoming construction projects. But Councilor Sandy Nurse, chair of the Sanitation and Waste Management Committee, stressed Thursday that truly quelling the city’s rodent problem would require “universal” roadside composting and a “city-wide container program.”
“A goldmine of rat food”
Ongoing plans to make al fresco dining last in town also include a focus on rat control. Street eateries must be removable, Levine said, lest rats live rent-free — or permanently — underneath them.
However, something more obvious could be the biggest culprit: junk. Rather than leaving bags on the street for pickup each week, a new Department of Sanitation (DSNY) pilot is testing the use of “rodent-resistant bins” to store trash in — because the current method of stacking trash bags on top of trash bags cuts corners it not quite. In mid-October, Mayor Eric Adams announced a new plan to move the time that trash can be left out on the street for pickup from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. starting April next year. “The rats don’t rule the city; we do,” DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the press conference.
“If it’s not done right,” Levine told Our Town about the garbage disposal for pickup, “it can become a gold mine for rats.” A real New York City nightmare. But City Council members have other plans — and some liberating news.
“The rats told us they wanted to officially surrender,” Nurse said Thursday as the two rat protesters walked past, waving a white trash bag in defeat.
