Reducing the Rat Population
As part of NYCHA’s efforts to reduce the rat population, 57 developments are receiving extra help tailored to each development’s specific needs – that includes dry-ice abatement treatments, more exterminators, new trash bins, and new interior and exterior compactors. In addition, NYCHA is replacing 50 dirt basements with concrete and installing 8,000 door sweeps on basement doors with gaps.
These additional pest control efforts are working: New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene inspections show a 45 percent reduction in rat burrows.
This is part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $32 million Neighborhood Rat Reduction Plan, which seeks to reduce the rat population by as much as 70 percent in the city’s most rat-infested neighborhoods: the Grand Concourse area of the Bronx, Chinatown/East Village/Lower East Side in Manhattan, and Bushwick/Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
Watch a video about NYCHA’s efforts to reduce the rat population here.
