'Prisoner In My Own Home': Rat Complaints Surge In New York City

NEW YORK CITY — Swarms of rats have Kemba Dunham ready to sell her Bed-Stuy home.

For 22 years, Dunham has been unafraid to go outside her Lewis Avenue home. But that changed during the coronavirus pandemic, when the sight of rodents creepy-crawling over her block, scurrying through piles of trash, became overwhelming.

The ratty infestation is so bad she now asks her children to escort her from Ubers to her front door.

"I'm essentially a prisoner in my own home because I don't go outside to avoid the rats," she told Patch.

The rodent infestation spurred Dunham to do what is the only recourse for many New Yorkers: call 311.

She's not alone.

New Yorkers made roughly 44,000 calls to 311 to complain about rats over the pandemic's course, data shows.

Pandemic complaints about rats peaked at 2,698 during October 2021, a 74 percent increase over the same month the year before, data shows.

And rat complaints so far in 2022 have already far outpaced levels by this time during the pandemic's first two years, according to data.

Complaints in January and February this year are 50 percent and 42 percent higher than the same months in 2020 and 2021, data shows.

New Yorkers have blamed a bevy of culprits — from expanded outdoor dining to new construction to growing compost heaps — but experts warn the rodent surge may be more perceived than real.

Simply put, when the pandemic drove people indoors they started to notice what has always been crawling under their feet.

"When we slow down and there’s not as much going on, it may be more obvious that they’re present,” said Matthew Frye, a senior extension associate with the state's Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University.

“It would be difficult for me to say if this is a real phenomenon or this is perception."

'We know more about polar bears than the rats that occupy our cities'

Rats have always reigned supreme in New York City.

They scurry along subway rails, they infest restaurants, they even become celebrities.

But while Pizza Rat, Avocado Rat, Hennessy Rat and Pole Rat have momentarily stolen our hearts (and our leftovers), most New Yorkers view them as a nuisance best eradicated from the Big Apple.

The coronavirus pandemic may have been a blessing in disguise for those rat haters, at least temporarily, research shows.

One study found rat complaints overall decreased 29.5 percent in the month after lockdowns first took effect in New York City — a finding that dovetails with previous Patch analyses.

But the researchers found a notable exception: areas near restaurants and other food service establishments remained hotspots.

Such scenes were vividly depicted in a May 2020 Inside Edition story which showed swarms of rats in the empty streets of pandemic New York City, lugging French fries and scurrying into cars.

Frye said those rat races were likely out of desperation — when restaurants closed for indoor dining and scaled back operations, that deprived the rodents of a consistent source of food.

Researchers found that starving rats resorted to cannibalism and even eating their young, Frye said.

"It’s predicted their populations did take a hit because of food availability," he said.

How big of a hit rat populations took is unknown, Frye said, because studying rats in urban environments is inherently difficult.

Researchers have tried to use radio collars and other trackers to study urban rats, but those have proven unsuccessful, he said.

“Someone has said that we know more about polar bears than the rats that occupy our cities,” he said.

One phenomenon that is well-known, however, among rats is the so-called "boomerang effect," Frye said. Essentially, researchers have documented that rat populations decline after pest control efforts — such as using poison baits — only to rapidly rebound, he said.

“It’s possible that even if there was a hit taken, the population could have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels,” he said.

'They’re running all over the place'

Hit or not, New Yorkers across the city obviously perceive rats to be a growing problem — and they're pointing fingers.

Take composting: a local community farm nonprofit, Harlem Grown, recently shut down a long-standing food scrap drop off site.

Tony Hillery, the group's founder and executive director, said they dealt with hundreds of pounds of food scraps, "an industrial commercial-sized volume," every other day, especially when the city shut down curbside compost pickup during the pandemic.

Neighbors increasingly blamed their community's rodent problems on the site, Hillery noted.

"When do you go from serving a small amount of households processing household food scraps to alienating the majority of your community because of these cat-sized rats running around?" he said.

But Hillery had a culprit of his own: new construction.

Harlem, he pointed out, has new buildings going up frequently. Such construction uproots colonies of rats, he argued.

"You uproot them, they’re running all over the place, and compost is an easy target," he said. "As we’re trying our best to mitigate this influx of volume, it’s easy for the community at large to point their finger at Harlem Grown."

Other New Yorkers have increasingly blamed construction related to outdoor dining, specifically sidewalk and street structures outside restaurants, for the rats they see.

Dunham, the Bed-Stuy resident afraid to leave her home, is one of them. She and many of her neighbors fear a proposed Open Street on Lewis Avenue will only compound the problem.

"All along Lewis Avenue, you see nothing but garbage," she said.

"It is all over the neighborhood. I don’t even like to go out for a power walk, you know? There’s going to be garbage piled everywhere and you don’t know what is going to jump out from those piles."

A review of 311 calls centered on Lewis Avenue confirms Dunham and her neighbors made 38 rat complaints since the pandemic began.

Most rat complaints in the city come from Brooklyn, which has averaged 650 a month from March 2020 onward, data shows. Manhattan is a close second, with 470 monthly average complaints during the pandemic.

Frye warned that 311 complaints are an imperfect method of measuring rat populations. He noted that the same person can make multiple calls, or that residents in underserved communities could have bigger problems to complain about than rats.

But he acknowledged 311 calls could be a barometer of public perception. New York City government does a "phenomenal job" of rat control in general, but should still address the complaints, Frye said.

"If more people are complaining about rats in general, it’s something that should be taken seriously," Frye said.

Patch writers Nick Garber and Anna Quinn contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on the New York City Patch