Who you gonna call? Rat-busters!
City health officials are sending special crews into four newly identified rodent hot spots — including where Mayor Eric Adams has his critter-plagued rental property — to try to curb the perennial scourge.
The sweeping “Rat Mitigation Zones” are divided into: Chinatown, the East Village and Lower East Side in Manhattan; Harlem in Manhattan, the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.
Adams’ brownstone rental is on Lafayette Avenue in Bed-Stuy.
It has already been slapped with fines for rodent infestation — prompting Republican rival Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels to clean up to Hizzoner’s block, including using feral cats to scare away the rats.
Sliwa continued to hammer Adams on Monday over his handling of the city’s war on rats.
“Adams can’t even control the rats in his own building. The mayor has not been able to do anything about rat infestation,” Sliwa claimed to The Post.
Hizzoner has promised to appoint a $170,000-a-year city “rat czar” to try to help curb the scourge.
The special crews are being sent out to tackle New York’s rat problem. Christopher SadowskiHe recently said he already hired the person but refused to say “who she is,” only adding she “hates rats.” City Hall still would not name the person when asked by The Post on Monday.
The neighborhoods that the Health Department considers in need of rat remediation were identified based on 311 complaints, summonses and orders of abatement, a high volume of rat-bait inspections, referral letters to city agencies and reports of rat exterminations.
Adams signed a law approved by the City Council last November that required the city to identify neighborhoods grappling with pest infestation.
Mayor Eric Adams promised to appoint a $170,000-a-year city “rat czar” to try to help curb the scourge. Dennis A. Clark
A worker fills the rat burrows with dry ice. Matthew McDermott
City health officials are sending special crews into four newly identified rodent hot spots. Matthew McDermottThe rules, published in The City Record, also target rampant rat infestation in any parks or playgrounds managed by the Big Apple’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
The law requires the city to launch a “data driven, coordinated, multi-agency effort [in the mitigation zones] to address rats and the conditions that cause them.”
The Sanitation Department also now requires residents and businesses to put out their trash later — after 6 p.m. in a secure container of 55 gallons or less with a secure lid, or after 8 p.m. if putting bags directly on the curb, instead of 4 p.m. — hopefully reducing the number of hours for rats to rummage through garbage.
Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels are cleaning up Mayor Eric Adams’ block. Gregory P. Mango
Sliwa is using feral cats to catch the neighborhood rats. Matthew McDermottThe new rules went into effect Saturday but the Sanitation Department will give a 30-day grace period and will not begin issuing summonses to residents or businesses until May 1. Only warnings will be issued until then.
“We want to get rid of rats. We want to reduce the amount of time that rat food is sitting out on the streets,” Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch told NY1 on Monday.
“We also want our streets to look and feel different for New Yorkers. We don’t want people to see [rats].”
The Health Department said in a statement Monday, “When rats appear, New York City takes action to send them packing.
“Focusing on Rat Mitigation Zones is one aggressive strategy we employ, using a set of criteria to launch a multi-agency effort aimed at kicking rats out of our neighborhoods.”
The agency said targeting Rat Mitigation Zones has been part of the city’s strategy to combat rats since 2017, although the new law approved by the mayor and the council last year requires that neighborhoods identified as targeted hot spots be publicly identified in the City Record.
