This neighborhood is completely kept to mice.
Rat sightings are prevalent throughout the city, but some areas have large spikes. One area in Queens has increased 311 pest complaints by 119% last year.
“Every house has a rat and no one has done anything about it,” said Shubro MD, Jamaica Hills, Queens. The neighbourhood portion of Borough's Community Board 8 saw an incredible increase from 2023 to 2024, alongside Briarwood, Hillcrest, Holliswood and more.
“In my apartment, I put up a trap of glue,” MD told the Post. “Every morning I can see two or three of them, but I'm still running around.
“want [the city] To do something about it,” the 39-year-old owner of the marketing consulting company added. “We have kids in our apartment. That's not good for our health. They can get into our food.”
Behind Queens CB 8, the list of districts where rat reports are the highest, is the city's island/slogsneck area, which is up 30.86%. Brooklyn's CB 7 (Sunset Park) and CB 14 (Flatbush) had 35.46% and 57.04% increase in rats, respectively.
The increase occurs despite overall downwards in rat sightings, according to the Ministry of Health, as reports of 311 rats across the city have fallen 24% year-on-year compared to January.
However, compared to the previous year between 2023 and 2024, citywide complaints about rat sightings fell by only about 1%, according to 311 data, which dropped from 25,446 to 25,190 complaints.
Rat sightings called 311 fell in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island over the same period. Meanwhile, the same kind of reports rose 6.77 and 6.3% in Queens and the Bronx, respectively.
Sanitation spokesman Vincent Gragnini said the 2024 data may not yet reflect the impact of the new waste containerization regulations requiring all buildings with 1-9 housing units to be placed in airtight containers.
This effort began in January 2025. And the fine will not come into effect until April 1st, the spokesman said.
“Currently, 70% of New York City's garbage is in containers,” Granyani posted in a statement. “And we have the remaining 30% plan and we're using street containers for big residential buildings starting with a deployment in West Harlem this spring.”
However, some Jamaica Hills residents like 25-year-old Tanya said that despite residents having their own “rat-resistant” closed cans, the rats are still “anywhere” and “anywhere.”
“We tried to get them [trash bins] It's close, but they're expensive. Tanya said. “There should be multiple things, but you can only buy one.”
Maritza Valbuena, a college student who has lived with her parents in a Briarwood apartment since 2021, said the city's new bin is making a “big” difference to the block's rat problem.
“People were throwing trash outside the building and in the lobby, which attracted mice and they were in their apartments,” said Valbuena, 19. “The city gave us a trash can. It helped a lot. The owner spoke to the tenants, so everything was cleaner than before.”
Due to the borough, Brooklyn rat sightings fell by 0.8%, Staten Island fell by 2%, and Manhattan fell by 11.5% between 2023 and 2024.
The community boards representing Midtown, Greenwich Village/Noho and Queens Bay Terrace showed the biggest improvements compared to the previous year, with the report down 66.21%, 37.59% and 34.71%, respectively.
However, rats remain life facts, even in areas where reported sightings have decreased.
Manhattan healthcare worker Isa Almanzar has denounced the construction of a new 64-storey high-rise building due to the explosion of a rat next to his home in the financial district.
“Now I've taken my trash out and there's a rat in it. I didn't have it before this started,” said the 33-year-old resident who had lived in her building for five years.
The property is sandwiched between a construction site and a nearby immigrant shelter, contributing to excess trash on the streets, she said.
Construction “grows all kinds of pests,” said Almanzar.
“It's the perfect hive.”
