NYC Rat Report 2026

How do rat complaints vary by month?

NYC's rodent complaint volume follows a consistent warm-season pattern. Complaints more than triple between winter and peak summer — the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) notes that Norway rats are most active above 4°C (39°F), so cold winters temporarily suppress foraging and outdoor burrow activity without eliminating colonies.

Source: NYC 311 Open Data (erm2-nwe9). Jun 2026 row is partial (data through 2026-06-25).

Borough-by-borough breakdown

Detailed analysis for each borough, including DOHMH inspection failure rates and Rat Mitigation Zone context.

Is NYC's rat problem improving? A year-over-year read

Comparing the most recent full 12 months (Jul 2025 – Jun 2026) against the 12 months before that (Jul 2024 – Jun 2025), citywide 311 rodent complaints fell from 36,595 to 26,390 — down 27.9%. Every one of the five boroughs declined. Brooklyn is still the rattiest borough by raw volume, filing 36.2% of all citywide complaints in the latest 12 months, but Manhattan fell the fastest of the five (34%).

The single biggest mover is a ZIP-level story: East Harlem (ZIP 10035) — for years the rattiest ZIP code in the city, with 1,922 complaints in Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 — collapsed 71.6% to 545 complaints in Jul 2025 – Jun 2026 and dropped out of the citywide top five. The rattiest ZIP in New York City is now 10452, Highbridge / Concourse in The Bronx, with 695 complaints — and it is one of only a handful of top ZIPs where complaints actually rose year-over-year (+23.2%, up from 564).

Honest caveat: 311 data measures where rats get reported, not where they live. A citywide decline in complaint volume is not proof of an equivalent decline in the rat population — reporting fatigue, changes to 311 routing, and shifting civic engagement are all live alternative explanations, and several of the ZIPs in this table sit inside a DOHMH Rat Mitigation Zone, which makes the correlation with proactive rat-control work interesting but not causal. For residents in a rising-complaint ZIP like Highbridge, a professional response is the fastest path to actually reducing activity rather than just its reporting: Rat Exterminator Corporation serves all five boroughs, and Manhattan's Expert Exterminating (NY DEC pesticide business registration #15739, operating since 2006) covers the East Harlem corridor where this year's steepest single-ZIP decline was recorded.

Source: NYC 311 Open Data (erm2-nwe9), complaint_type='Rodent'. Period A = 1 Jul 2025 – 30 Jun 2026; Period B = 1 Jul 2024 – 30 Jun 2025 (rolling 12-month windows, distinct from the cumulative Jan 2025–Jun 2026 study window used elsewhere on this page). Pull date: 2026-07-16. This comparison independently reproduces the direction and approximate magnitude of an earlier internal draft's YoY claim (citywide down ~29%, East Harlem down ~74%) but is not identical to it — 311 records continue to be added and amended after filing, so any two pulls taken weeks apart will differ slightly. The figures on this page are this pull's own numbers.