Politics
Gaining Ground in the War on Rats
The city’s “rat czar” says trash containerization is having an impact on the rodent population.
Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at the success of the city’s efforts to curb its rat problem. We’ll also look at Mayor Eric Adams’s testimony in the House.
Credit…Emon Hassan for The New York Times
The last time Kathleen Corradi saw a rat in New York City was in December, when she went on a “rat walk” outing that was open to the public.
Corradi, the city’s rat czar, did not say that her experience meant there are no rats in New York City anymore. There is no way to know how many there are. “We don’t have a rat census, right?” she noted during a recent conversation.
But one way the city tracks the fight against rats is by calls to 311. The downward numbers are a sign, Corradi said, that efforts to cause “additional stress” for rats were doing just that.
One recent source of stress for rats was a requirement for single-family homes and small apartment buildings to containerize their trash. The rule took effect in mid-November. Rat sightings — based on calls to 311 — dropped 23 percent in December and 24 percent in January, compared with the same months a year earlier, according to the Sanitation Department.
