Gentrification continues to wreak havoc on Black communities in cities across the country, but a new report from The New York Times found that wealthy new residents are bringing waves of rats with them.
Four communities in Brooklyn undergoing heavy gentrification, Prospect Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick and Brownsville, all saw massive spikes in 311 calls about rats.
There has been a 38% rise in rat complaints made to 311 this year. Since 2010, Brooklyn has had nearly 50,000 rat sightings.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have done stories recently on the increase in rat complaints in cities across the country. The New York Times interviewed scientists and experts who pegged the rise to two things: gentrification and climate change.
The constant construction across Brooklyn neighborhoods was disturbing rat nests underground and with warmer overall temperatures, more rats are surviving the winter and procreating.
Some researchers and websites have delved even deeper into the data and questioned whether changing demographics were behind the rise in 311 calls about rats. Some studies found that new residents were less used to seeing rats and believed their complaints would or should be heard. However, former residents may have already given up on that issue.
”It became clear that mapping 311 calls isn’t a good way to tell where rats are; it’s a way to tell where the wealthy white people live.”https://t.co/wyLTNYnPBb
— Dr. Tara L. Conley (@taralconley) May 24, 2019
In the wake of that NYT rats-and-gentrification story, @emily_lip goes once more unto the breach to repeat a point she and I made three years ago: all these data-driven stories about rats are really about the way people respond to rats. https://t.co/TZswGOBJhB
— Jake Bittle (@jake_bittle) May 24, 2019
“No New Yorker likes having rats in their community and we are committed to continuing the work of controlling rats in all of our neighborhoods,” NYC deputy mayor of operations Laura Anglin told The New York Times.
“There is no doubt that rats have a major impact on New Yorkers’ quality of life and this administration takes seriously our responsibility to control and mitigate their population.”
Anglin added that Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to spend more than $30 million on the city's rat problem two years ago. Despite the investment, residents have seen little change in the number of rats.
Scientists tasked by the city to deal with the problem also said that gentrification brought a rise in restaurants, who leave bags of garbage and food on the street through the night before they are picked up by dump trucks.
As a result, buffets of food were left for hundreds of rats every night and has contributed to the increased procreation of rats in the city.
Rats have also increased risks of disease in certain neighborhoods and. In 2017, a Bronx resident died from leptospirosis caught from rat urine.
