Rat Inspections
Rule status: Proposed
Agency: DOHMH
Comment by date: September 14, 2026
Printable Version of Proposed Rule Text
Ch.-41-NOI_Rules-Relating-to-Rat-Inspections_8-12-26.pdf
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is proposing to add a new Chapter 41 to Title 24 of the Rules of the City of New York to establish rules for determining whether a building has passed or failed an inspection for rats pursuant to Local Law 8 of 2026
Send comments by
- Email: [email protected]
- Fax: 1 (347) 396-6087
- Mail: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of the General Counsel, 42-09 28th Street, 14th Floor Room/Floor: CN30 ; Long Island City, New York 11101
Public Hearings
Attendees who need reasonable accommodation for a disability such as a sign language translation should contact the agency by calling 1 (347) 396-6116 or emailing [email protected] by August 31, 2026
Date
September 14, 2026
10:00am - 11:00am EDT
Location
The hearing will be conducted by video conference accessible via internet or telephone. To participate in the public hearing, enter to register Zoom meeting
42-09 28th Street, 14th Floor
Long Island City New York 11101
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https://health-nyc.zoomgov.com/j/1659561163?pwd=VeOYdE9L6mLxAjB9aiajLvQg6dLj9x.1If prompted to provide meeting ID and passcode, please enter the following: Meeting ID: 165 956 1163, Passcode: 108051 By phone: For access, dial: (646) 828-7666 or Toll-free (833) 568-8864; (833) 435-1820, then please enter the following Meeting ID: 165 956 1163
Disability Accommodation
- Closed Captioning
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Online comments: 3
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Liliane Martin
Comment added August 15, 2026 5:56pmBack Yards full of junk attract rats and construction sites displace them. My Building is the back to a construction site and in the last few weeks rats have been seen at night. Something should be done to exterminate the rats before starting a new construction project, particularly when it is on a unmaintained backyard in which people have been dumping garbage for years.
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Suzanne Reisman
Comment added August 16, 2026 12:28pmI’m a graduate of the NYC Rat Academy and Sanitation Foundation Trash Academy, as well as a member of the NYC Rat Pack. I also have a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University, and I offer a walking tour covering 400 years of sanitation history in NYC. As I teach my clients about sanitation – including rat population management and mitigation – we discuss the various signs of rat activity and infestations. All of the items cited in the proposed rule change are signs that DOHMH know are issues with rats that need to be mitigated to protect public health. We see these conditions on our tour all the time. I know that these sites have been reported to the City because I track them in the NYC Rat Portal. This rule change is important and must pass. This is best practice and should be clearly stated.
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Anonymous
Comment added September 6, 2026 12:12pmI write in opposition to the proposed amendment of Health Code S 41-03, insofar as the proposed amendment would purports to allow the Health Department unfettered discretion to require property owners to remove “vegetation.” As drafted, the amendment contains no limits on the Health Department’s purported discretion to determine that plants of any kind, of any height, or of any density “are serving as sources of shelter or harborage for rats.” The Health Department’s expertise and authority does not and should not extend to require property owners to remove landscaping, based imply on the Health Department’s unilateral and unbounded assertion that rats may shelter. Under the amendment as written, the Health Department could determine that any and all plants — as compared to concrete — serve as sources of shelter.
It is a matter of basic ecological and environmental fact that animals, insects, and plants coexist. To be sure, the presence of unduly dense or high vegetation may indeed be a source of shelter for rats, and should be abated.
However, proposed Section 41-03(a)(ii) would allow the Health Department to determine that any “vegetation” constitutes such a shelter. Whereas proposed 41-03(a)(ii) would require that “weeds” be “dense” for the Health Department to require abatement, there is no similar density requirement for “vegetation.”
The proposed amendment should be further edited to require that the Health Department only deem “dense vegetation” to be a condition conducive to rats, not any “other vegetation.”
In addition, based solely on the Health Department’s assertion that “the presence of dense weeds or other vegetation that are serving as sources of shelter or harborage for rats,” the Health Department would have unfettered discretion under proposed Section 41-03(b) to require any unspecified abatement. Proposed Section 41-03(b) allows the Health Department to require a person to “take such measures as may be necessary to prevent and control the harborage and free movement of rats, which may include, but are not limited to,” a non-exhaustive list. This unbounded authority must have a limiting principle. As drafted, the Health Department could assert that a property owner must convert landscaping to concrete, as there is no limit in the rule on how the Health Department would determine what is necessary.
Section 41-03(b) must be redrafted to impose reasonable limiting principles on the Health Department’s authority to assert what abatement measures are necessary, and to provide clear provisions for a property owner to rebut the Health Department’s assertions of causality and necessity, particularly with respect to assertions by the Health Department that could purport to require the destruction of gardens and landscaping.
Comments close by September 14, 2026