City To Hunt Down 23K Rats In Rodent-Infested NYCHA Buildings

NEW YORK CITY — The ten most rodent-infested public housing developments — home to about 23,000 rats — are about to get a massive extermination treatment, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office announced Tuesday.

NYCHA houses in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan will see dry ice abatements, full-time exterminators, better trash bins and new concrete floors as part of the mayor’s plan to attack the city’s most rat-infested areas.

“We want to make the greatest city on earth the worst place in the world to be a rat,” de Blasio said. “We are launching an all-out offensive to dramatically reduce the rat population at these developments and improve the quality of life for residents.”

Exterminators will be plugging up rat burrows with dry ice at 10 NYCHA houses in Grand Concourse, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and the East Village starting this week and through June, officials said.

The Butler, Morris I, Morris II and Webster Houses in The Bronx; Bushwick, Marcy and Hylan Houses in Brooklyn; and Riis Houses in Manhattan will be assigned full-time exterminators to address residents’ complaints, officials said.

The city will hand out smaller garbage bins that fit in NYCHA trash chutes and seal off dirt basements with concrete "rat slabs" in an effort that will continue into 2019, said officials.

The onslaught is part of a $32 million rat attack plan that involves solar-powered trash cans and high dumping fines which de Blasio first announced in July 2017.

Photo courtesy of Anatoly Pareev/Shutterstock