Harlem Designated for Rat Mitigation Program
Mayor Eric Adams said he has someone in mind to be the city’s Rat Czar, but the name has not been publicly revealed as of yet.
| 05 Apr 2023 | 03:33
West and East Harlem are both included in the city’s rat mitigation areas. Photo: Department of Health.
The City Department of Health has announced designated “rat mitigation zones” to receive extra attention as part of the city’s efforts to curb rat populations.
One Manhattan zone includes a large swath of Harlem, stretching from the Hudson to the East River.
In a release on Monday, April 3, the city stated it would combine Harlem’s three community districts—109, 110 and 111—into one large rat mitigation zone to receive extra attention.
The zones were chosen based on a variety of factors, including number of commissioner orders to abate, number of rat baiting visits by the Department in the areas over the past year, number of 311 reports, and the areas’ general susceptibility to rat infestation.
Other neighborhoods designated for rat mitigation include Chinatown/LES and a swath of North Brooklyn including parts of Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Prospect Heights. However, the rest of Manhattan is left out of the city’s plan, despite complaints of rat infestations in other areas like the West Village and Hell’s Kitchen.
Mayor Eric Adams has said that fighting the city rat population, which appears to have grown larger during COVID and the spread of outdoor dining sheds, is a top priority. As of April 1, the time when garbage could be put out on curbs was rolled back several hours in an effort to cut into the time that rats can feast on the curbside garbage Under the new rules, garbage inside a container holding 55 gallons of trash or less can be placed at curbside after 6 pm. Garbage in plastic bags cannot be placed curbside until 8 pm.
He is also in the process of hiring a “Rat Czar” who will paid $170,000 a year, but he has not yet revealed the identity of the person, other than to say the new commissioner is a woman.
A rental building in Brooklyn that Adams owns has been hit with fines for rodent infestation and that has drawn criticsm from one of his rivals, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa who ran for mayor against Adams on the Republican ticket. “Adams can’t even control the rats in his own building,” Sliwa told the Post recently. “The mayor has not been able to do anything about rat infestation.”
Adams said recently that he has zeroed in on who the new rat czar will be but only revealed that the post will go to a woman.
The first thing I asked her was, ‘How do you feel about rats?’” Adams was quoted as saying to the Post.
“She was very clear. She said, ‘Listen we got to get those rats under control and their population.’
“Rodents should not be in our homes, should not be running across our yards, should not be biting our children,” Adams added. “It’s a sanitary problem, a health problem, it is also traumatizing.”