NEW YORK— To many in New York City, the rats are winning.
The city’s complaint hotline is on pace for a record year of rat calls, exceeding the more than 24,000 over each of the last two years. Blistering audits have faulted efforts to fight what one official called a “rat crisis.” And even jaded New Yorkers were both disgusted and a little impressed by “Pizza Rat,” the plucky rodent in a recent viral YouTube clip seen dragging a large cheese slice down a subway stairwell.
Nora Prentice, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has repeatedly complained to the city about a colony of about 200 rats in a neighborhood park.
“It’s like the Burning Man of rats,” she said. “They’re just sitting there in a lawn chair waiting for you. . I don’t know what the city can do about this rat condominium. It’s really gross.”
Prentice said that she avoids the area because of the rats and that complaints she filed with the city were closed after officials told her they were “working on the problem.”
“It means you can’t lay down and relax in that park,” she said. “What kind of an answer is this?”
Such gripes have found an advocate in Comptroller Scott Stringer, the city’s top financial officer, who has taken on the self-appointed role of rat czar. In separate audits over the past two years, he has criticized the city’s health department for not responding quickly enough to rat complaints, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways, for not cleaning stations more regularly. Such breakdowns, he says, have allowed rats to thrive.
