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Rats love Ridgewood and it was the most popular neighborhood for them in the borough last year based on complaints, according to a newly released study by Renthop.
In 2018, there were 179 rodent complaints in Ridgewood, up 4.7 percent from 171 in the year prior, according to the annual “Is Your Neighborhood Rodent-Infested?” study.
Renthop analyzed several U.S. cities in the study and found that Chicago maintained its title of “rat capital” with more than 40,000 rodent complaints filed in 2018. New York City received a total of 17,353 rat sightings complaints in the same period down 9 percent from 2017, when the city-wide number reached an all-time high.
Broken down by borough, Brooklyn is the favorite of rats with 6,565 complaints. Queens comes in fourth with 2,605 total complaints. However, if looking at complaints per square mile, Manhattan takes the crown with a whopping 94.5 rodent complaints per square mile.
In Queens, Jackson Heights takes the second-place title of most rats behind Ridgewood with 162 complaints and Astoria takes home the bronze with 99 complaints in 2018. South Jamaica doesn’t fall far behind with 93 total complaints last year.
Below is Renthop’s map in which you can click on neighborhoods to see the number of rat complaints in each for 2017 and 2018.
The study also noted that two Queens neighborhoods had the highest spikes in complaints between 2017 and 2018. Auburndale had a 340 percent increase from five critter complaints in 2017 to 22 in 2018 and Oakland Gardens’s sighting tripled from just four in 2017 to 12 in 2018.
Yet, it’s not all bad news for Queens residents with a rat phobia. The study also found that many of the borough’s neighborhoods had a decline in rodent sightings.
In fact, four of the five neighborhoods across the city with the largest drop in complaints are in Queens. Bayside had a 75 percent drop with 18 in 2018 from 73 the year prior, Rego Park had a 73 percent decrease also with 18 in 2018 from 66 in 2017, College Point had a 64 percent decrease from 14 complaints in 2017 to just five last year and Ozone Park’s rat sightings dropped by 63 percent from 38 in 2017 to 14 in 2018.
July is the month with the highest number of rodent complaints across the city, according to the study.
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15 Comments
I’ve never seen a rat here except on the subway tracks, always thought Astoria is pretty clean!
Is it too much to ask people throw your refuse into receptacles ?? the sidewalk isn’t your garbage can. I think enforcement of the health codes people littering businesses that don’t clean the pavement should be enforced. Its lovely that vagrants make the sidewalk they’re open kitchen with food all over the place. Our homeless out reach advocates are no where to be found. Its going to get worse in our Socialist run mecca
If there is litter in front of a property the ticket is for the owner of the building not the business establishment. Property owners are the ones responsible. I also still see household trash being dumped in city trash bins.
Clearly we should stop electing the rats to the city council and boro
official positions.
Good kids. All they need is access to fresh fruit and vegetables and other programs so they won’t join gangs, deal drugs, spread rabies, and rob people.
The schoolkids eat fast food and then just dump the wrappers and containers wherever they happen to be instead of in the garbage cans or better yet, bring your own stuff home to your own house! I know when I take the train in the morning (the R) there are food wrappers, containers and even pieces of food underneath the seats. The MTA can’t be cleaning the trains 24 hours a day. Garbage brings vermin. A guy on my floor in the building orders pizza a lot and just leaves the box in the incinerator room. I doubt he cleans it out and we have to have the exterminator come more often lately.
You sound pretty fragile for NYC. Maybe you should move out of it if you can’t handle city life.
Same in Jackson Heights!!!
@Dave : Guess what, Astoria was never like that type of neighborhood. Always clean and family oriented one of the best small neighborhoods to live in. Ever since more and more yuppies/hipsters / weirdos started infesting the neighborhood like rodents , Astoria locals and natives have seen how it’s been ruined entirely. One thing I will agree with you is your comment regarding the trash and the sanitation department. Everything else you’ve mentioned is all bullshit. Food trucks aren’t filthy or else they would cease to operate. Maybe you shouldn’t step foot in this part of town. We’d be better off without you and your careless rants about Astoria.
I think you’re looking back with rose colored glasses on. Plus, hipsters and yuppies aren’t really known litterers.
But I shouldn’t be surprised—like other MAGA dumb*ss, you’re blaming new arrivals with zero proof of anything because it’s easy and takes the responsibility off yourself.
Please do everyone in Astoria a favor and disappear. Thanks.
You must be a Trump lover. Sad, sad, sad
Republicans do still live in our city. Hence these sightings.
Love trumps hate
This is why they need to bring back stop-and-frisk!!!
I am not surprised at all. Astoria is filthy. All the city trash bins on practically every main avenue attract these rodents in addiction to all the construction and eateries (including the filthy food trucks). The trash bins also either over flow and are carelessly being picked up by sanitation workers which adds more debris onto the sidewalk.