Mayor Adams announces rat sightings have declined for eight straight months

By Kemberly Richardson

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    NEW YORK CITY, New York (WABC) — If you feel like you’ve seen fewer rats on New York City streets, it turns out you are not alone.

The Sanitation Department announced on Tuesday that its efforts to cut down on the city’s rat population appear to be working.

So far this year, there have been nearly 14,000 rat sightings reported to 311.

That’s down 17 percent compared to last year.

Mayor Eric Adams called it his ‘trash revolution’ to clean up the streets and highways in the five boroughs.

In 2023, the city put a multi-pronged plan in place aimed at getting rid of the 4-legged menaces and it appears to be working.

The push to change where businesses and residential buildings put their garage seems to be paying off.

The Department of Sanitation says some of the biggest changes are happening in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx and on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

“I haven’t seen many rats around here at all so it’s surprising because its New York, you’d see an abundance like on the subway of course but actually on the streets here pretty good,” Cesar Lopez, Lower East Side resident said.

Several factors including businesses and residential buildings are now putting out trash from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and also pick up times when crews are starting at midnight instead of waiting until 6 a.m.

Then there’s all of the new container requirements, where everyone is putting their trash which stands at 75 percent and the Mayor says the goal is 100 percent.

“These containers are a huge step forward of garbage bags, plastic bags on our streets. Commissioner Tisch used to say it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet and you’ll never solve the rat problem if you can’t get the garbage bags off our streets,” Adams said.

Leticia Ramirez has lived on the Lower East Side for decades and like most New Yorkers, when it comes to rats this is a deluxe apartment in the ground.

“That building, they tell me the basement is full of rats,” Ramirez said.

The 83-year-old has a strong opinion.

“They are nasty, dirty,” she said.

Another key piece to the Mayor’s ‘trash revolution’ is the Department of Sanitation’s new highway unit.

Formed in April of 2023, crews have cleared 15 million pounds of litter and debris from the city’s1100 miles of highway and from medians.

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