Rat-a-fooey!
Manhattan’s East Village is seeing rats make an unwelcome comeback, with sightings jumping 37.6% from a year earlier — even as rodent complaints have plunged across the city, according to New York City public records.
The spike comes in Manhattan Community Board 3 — which covers the East Village, the Lower East Side, Two Bridges and parts of Chinatown — despite major spending on containerized trash collection and other efforts aimed at curbing pests.
From Jan. 1 through July 11, the district logged 300 rat complaints, up from 218 during the same period last year, while most other community districts recorded sharp drops in rodent activity, a Post analysis of city 311 data found.
Across the five boroughs, reported sightings fell from 12,017 to 9,023 during that same timeframe, the records show.
“When I first moved in, I would definitely say they were the biggest problem,” said East Village resident Ahan Shah, 26, noting that the rats are “especially a problem at night.”
“I’ll walk in the middle of the street,” said local resident Nico, 23, “because I’m scared they’ll run by me.”
“I get scared,” said Elijah Orellana, 20, a porter at an apartment building on Canal Street in Chinatown. “They’re all near the garbage bins and where all the trash bags are.”
Sanitation department spokesman Vincent Gragnani told The Post the dramatic data can be attributed to just three problem areas in the district: Second Avenue between East Seventh Street and St. Mark’s Place; East Fifth Street between Cooper Square and Second Avenue; and Broome Street between Ludlow and Orchard Streets.
The latter saw an increase in rat reports by 400% compared to 2025 figures, the department said, adding that a handful of problem addresses on East Fifth Street and Broome Street account for the increase — and “potentially reflect issues inside the individual buildings.”
Unlike some other parts of Manhattan, the East Village is still littered with piles of black garbage bags tossed onto the street for curbside pickup — a practice that sanitation officials have been pushing to nix in order to curb rats.
The majority of rat-related calls in the district were made at addresses with more than 10 units – which are exempt for now from DSNY requirements mandating the use of new anti-rat garbage bins.
To date, 70% of all trash in the city is required to be in sealed containers, “and the remaining 30 percent is from high-density housing units, of which there are a high proportion in Manhattan,” Gragnani said.
“We are containerizing … trash in phases,” the rep said, “and by 2031, all trash will be in containers.”
The East Village and the rest of Community Board 3 were even designated a “rat mitigation zone” in 2022, which means the area saw more city resources — like more inspections and extermination efforts.
Orellana noted he would like to see the city install more public trash bins on street corners in the meantime, and attributes the influx in trash to passersby dumping loose food and garbage in residential cans.
The news comes as rat reports are down more than 23% citywide — a decrease so stark that Mayor Zohran Mamdani hasn’t installed another Big Apple rat czar after former Mayor Eric Adams’ appointee Kathleen Corradi left the fledgling post last year.
In fact, Manhattan’s Community Board 3 was one of just nine districts that reported an increase in rat sightings in 2026.
Other areas that saw increases in rat sightings this year include Bronx’s Community Board 8 (Kingsbridge) at 14%, Brooklyn’s Community Board 10 (Bay Ridge) at 8%, Manhattan’s Community Board 2 (Greenwich Village) at 6.35% and Brooklyn’s Community Board 3 (Bedford-Stuyvesant) at 5.79% — the latter of which is another designated rat mitigation zone.
The city has spent millions of dollars curbing its unofficial mascot on city streets, implementing everything from a pilot birth control program for rats in Harlem to gassing tree beds in Brooklyn.
Former Mayor Adams even created a brand new agency to try to keep his war on rats going after he left office, but that executive order was overturned by Mamdani.
Still, the efforts largely appear to be working, with 49 of 58 community boards in the Big Apple reporting a decrease in rat sightings since last year, according to city data.
Some of the highest successes year-over-year include Manhattan’s Community Board 6 — comprising Gramercy Park and Murray Hill — which reported a staggering 54.75% decrease in rat sightings.
Brooklyn community boards 2, 6, 11 and 13 also reported decreases by more than 40%, as did community boards 3 and 10 in the Bronx and 5 in Queens.
Gil Bloom, the president of NYC extermination company Standard Pest Management, previously told The Post the city is less ratty than the post-pandemic rat boom, when outdoor dining areas and “makeshift food service areas” created a Valhalla for varmints.
Garbage is also being placed on the sidewalk later and collected earlier, further cutting into the curbside smorgasbord, he said.
But East Village residents say they’re still waiting for their all-you-can-eat rat buffet to permanently close.
“I think it’s just a problem around the city of New York,” Shah sighed. “I feel like no matter what street you walk on, it’s always going to be a problem.”
