New York City received 17,353 rat sighting calls last year, this map shows them all

Earlier today I wrote about the rat and garbage problem in Los Angeles. But the problem is not limited to LA or to the west coast. Today the NY Times published a report about the serious rat problem in New York City. The map above is based on 311 calls to report rat sightings, more than 17,000 such reports were made last year alone:

Rat sightings reported to the city’s 311 hotline have soared nearly 38 percent, to 17,353 last year from 12,617 in 2014, according to an analysis of city data by OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit watchdog group, and The New York Times. In the same period, the number of times that city health inspections found active signs of rats nearly doubled.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, like mayors before him, has declared war on rats, but so far the city is still losing…

City health inspections found 30,874 instances of “active rat signs,” which including sightings and droppings, at buildings and properties last year, or nearly double the 16,315 instances in 2014, according to the analysis. In the first three months of this year, there were 8,003 inspection reports of active rat signs, up from 6,787 in the same period last year.

The Times offers a series of reasons for the rat problem: gentrification, population growth, tourism and of course climate change. Later in the article, you get to a much more likely source of the problem: the city’s trash collection.

Read the rest of the story HERE.