A court-monitored pledge to halve the number of rodents running rampant in public housing has gone nowhere, even as Adams and his new rat fighter expand ambitions citywide.
Rats
Posted inDepartment of Sanitation
Are New York City Streets Getting Filthier? The Numbers Aren’t So Clear
The mayor’s most recent management report showed the number of streets rated ‘filthy’ is up — but the sanitation department argues it’s due to the methodology used.
Posted inBrooklyn
Rats Overrun Plaza at Brooklyn Subway Stop That Mayor Promised to Help
Every morning, Aida Torres shoos away rodents, then repeatedly cleans in front and behind her Mexican restaurant, Don Burrito, in Brooklyn’s Newkirk Plaza. In the afternoon, she pours chlorine on the ground to deter the critters from scampering around her niche in the small shopping plaza atop the B and Q-line subway stop in Flatbush. […]
Posted inRats
Return of the Rats: Budget Cuts Means a Free Lunch for Rodents
As New York slowly reopens, many residents have noticed a disturbing return to normal: The rats are coming back, too. And budget cuts to programs targeting rats are raising concerns streets will only get worse, especially in some long-infested neighborhoods. “The trash is ridiculous and the rats are even more ridiculous,” said Tiffany Joy Murchison, […]
Posted inHousing
NYCHA Conducting Its Own 2020 Census — of Rats, Mice and Roaches
Additional reporting by Gabriel Sandoval Sign up for “THE CITY Scoop,” our daily newsletter where we send you stories like this first thing in the morning. Special teams of public housing staffers — trained at a “rat academy” — are fanning out across the city in an effort to get an accurate count of NYCHA’s […]
Posted inPublic Housing
Gnawing Problem: NYCHA Far From Meeting Rat Fix Deadline
The city Housing Authority won’t be able to meet its promised Aug. 31 deadline to clean out rats and other vermin from more than 70,000 public housing apartments, THE CITY has learned. Most of these apartments are plagued by the ubiquitous New York City rats who preside in burrows dug around — and sometimes even […]
Posted inPublic Housing
NYCHA Lead ‘Emergency’ as Clean-up Falters and Child Poisonings Rise
Additional reporting by Gabriel Sandoval The number of children in city public housing poisoned by lead is rising, NYCHA’s new federal monitor declared in a report detailing scandalous housing conditions — including rats scaling garbage piles to invade 14th-floor apartments. In his first report, monitor Bart Schwartz found the city housing authority has fallen far […]