We excerpt an interview that recently appeared in Public Seminar, a journal of ideas published by The New School.

Katy Einerson, a writer and community gardener in Brooklyn, has participated in the Rat Academy, a free course on rat prevention and management run by the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Caroline Bragdon directs neighborhood interventions for the Health Department’s Pest Control Services program. 

Katy Einerson: It’s no secret that we have a rat problem. Why do rats thrive here?

Caroline Bragdon: The Norway rat, which is the species we have, thrives in close proximity to humans. A high, dense human population is a contributing factor to a high level of rat activity. Alongside humans comes food waste. We’re eating everywhere we go, and we tend to store all the food waste we create outdoors. This means rats, which only need an ounce of food a day to survive, are thriving. If we were able to cut down those food sources, we would naturally cut down the rat population as well.

Einerson: It’s become a common refrain that rats got especially out of control during the pandemic. Is this notion backed by data?

Bragdon: It is backed by data. In 2019, the year prior to the pandemic, we were showing huge strides in our neighborhood rat control programs. We’ve been monitoring three areas since 2017 that had the highest rat populations as of that year: Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn; the Lower East Side, East Village, and Chinatown in Manhattan; and the Bronx Grand Concourse area from Yankee Stadium up to Fordham. Our data showed that when you do neighborhood-focused rat prevention in a very coordinated way, and partner with other City agencies, you can drive down rat populations in highly impacted neighborhoods. In 2019 we had some really nice results from multi-agency initiatives.

In 2020 and 2021, most of those programs were shut down. When you have a program that’s highly focused on rat prevention, and you stop that program or pare it down, a rebound occurs pretty quickly. Once some of our preventative and proactive work stopped we started seeing a surge of rat complaints.

My whole Neighborhood Rat Reduction team was diverted to the pandemic response, and we weren’t the only agency redirected. Sanitation, Health, Parks, we were all scaling back. Staff were also staying home because they had Covid. A lot of maintenance and street cleaning stopped and garbage pickup was scaled back. People were eating at home, so while commercial waste may have scaled back somewhat, there was more residential waste. The private sector, including struggling landlords and businesses, cut back pest control as well. We had all the conditions rats need to thrive occurring at the same time, which led to record-high rat populations.

2022 was a hard year. We saw high complaints and more properties were failing rat inspections than we’d ever seen previously. Now in 2023, we’re fully back at work and we’re beginning to get back some momentum, but just as it took a year or two to unravel our progress, we think it’s going to take a year or two to get back to where we were.

Einerson: After 12 years in NYC, I’ve nearly resigned myself to accepting rats as part of the landscape. Is this attitude common?

Bragdon: We definitely see variations in 311 call rates in different neighborhoods that don’t necessarily indicate higher or lower rat activity, but rather a higher or lower tolerance for the presence of rats. We may have a neighborhood with very high rat activity and relatively low call volume for 311, which suggests that people have been living alongside rats for a long time. It may also suggest that people have given up, that they feel there’s nothing they can do, and they see rats as part of the landscape.

Neighborhoods that have been dealing with rats for so long that they no longer call in complaints are the ones where we feel we need to do the most work. We do extra enforcement of landlord responsibilities for managing buildings and keeping them in good repair in these areas.

Einerson: What are New Yorkers' most common misconceptions about rats? 

Bragdon: I think it’s a misconception that rats are a given. We know we have the potential to lower rat populations. We’ve done it before. But the City needs a very coordinated public health approach to rat management. We need to think about prevention at all times. Because rats thrive in areas where there’s garbage, the City needs to constantly move garbage off the street and keep neighborhoods clean. Property owners need to invest in managing, storing, and moving waste. For a long time we’ve said, ‘Just put it on the curb! Sanitation will come get it.’ That mentality has done a lot of damage.

Many people erroneously believe rats aren’t their responsibility. In fact, everyone has a responsibility, every day. If you’re a regular New Yorker and you’re out eating in the street or the park, your responsibility is to make sure your trash goes in a can. 

We can sort and manage our garbage. If there’s composting in your neighborhood, you can compost organic waste. You can make sure your recyclables are rinsed and put in a container. Landlords can make sure they have enough garbage and recycling containers for all tenants. Businesses can vigorously clean up after serving food. Many businesses just toss their garbage on the curb: you see garbage leaking and spilling and there’s no effort to clean up. City agencies also have a responsibility for keeping City properties clean and rat free.

Einerson: What do you think about Mayor Eric Adams’s swashbuckling approach to rat control?

Bragdon: We are grateful to the Adams administration for focusing attention on Neighborhood Rat Reduction. City Hall has convened a multi-agency Rat Task Force and I think some of the work the administration is doing with the Department of Sanitation is going to be a game changer. For example, let’s get organics recycling into all neighborhoods [and] increase the presence of the Department of Sanitation in neighborhoods so we’re doing everything we can to make garbage less available to rats. 

Photo by: Janine and Jin Eden