Rat Inspections

Online comments: 4

• Liliane Martin

  Back 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.

  Comment added August 15, 2026 5:56pm

• Suzanne Reisman

  I’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.

  Comment added August 16, 2026 12:28pm

• Anonymous

  I 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.

  Comment added September 6, 2026 12:12pm

• Anonymous

  To the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:

  We are a manager of rent-stabilized multifamily buildings in New York City. We write in support of the Department’s objective — fewer rats — and in opposition to one provision that we believe will undermine it.

  1. The final sentence of § 41-03(b) should be struck.

  Section 41-03(b) prescribes a list of abatement measures the person in control must take: cleaning and sanitizing, storing garbage in hard containers with tight-fitting lids, clearing clutter from yards and basements, repairing holes and cracks, pest-proofing doors, windows, vents and drains, and retaining a pest professional licensed by the NYSDEC. The subdivision then provides that “the taking of any or all of such measures shall not be deemed a sufficient defense to a violation if the Department has observed any active sign of rats at the time of a compliance inspection.”

  That sentence converts a conduct standard into a results standard, and in doing so it renders the rest of the subdivision advisory. A rule that specifies what an owner must do, and then states that doing it is not a defense, offers no compliance path. The owner who hires a licensed exterminator, replaces the refuse containers, repairs the masonry and clears the yard stands in precisely the same legal position as the owner who does nothing. Whatever else that accomplishes, it reduces the marginal return on good-faith abatement to zero — which is the opposite of what the Department intends.

  It is also a poor fit for the underlying facts. Rats are mobile and do not respect lot lines. An owner controls their own premises; they do not control the adjoining lot, the public sidewalk, the sewer system, a neighboring restaurant’s refuse practices, or construction dewatering next door. Active signs of rats can reappear within days of a professional treatment through migration from off-site harborage. Under the proposed language, that reappearance is dispositive.

  We ask that the sentence be struck and replaced with a provision making documented performance of the § 41-03(b) measures an affirmative defense. In the alternative, limit the no-defense rule to cases in which the Department finds the person in control failed to take the prescribed measures.

  2. The economics: this is a cost mandate on parties with no corresponding revenue mechanism.

  Owners of rent-stabilized housing are price-takers. Rent is set by the Rent Guidelines Board, not by the market and not by the owner. For leases commencing October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027, Apartment/Loft Order #58 sets the renewal adjustment at 0% for a one-year lease and 0% for a two-year lease. The avenues that once allowed an owner to recover capital spending — IAI and MCI increases — were sharply capped and constrained by HSTPA in 2019.

  So when the City assigns a new cost to this housing stock, there is no mechanism by which the owner recovers it. The proposed rule assigns several: ongoing licensed pest-control service, hard lidded containers, masonry repair and pest-proofing of doors, windows, vents and drains, yard and cellar clearing, and the administrative burden of documenting all of it in order to rebut a prima facie case. Those costs are defensible on their own terms. What is not defensible is imposing them and then providing, in the same subdivision, that incurring them buys no protection.

  The predictable result is not more abatement. It is that penalty exposure gets priced as a recurring operating expense rather than treated as a deterrent, and that dollars are diverted from other building systems — heat, plumbing, roofs, elevators — into a compliance category where spending cannot change the outcome. Tenants are not better served by that reallocation.

  3. § 41-03(a) should define “conditions conducive to rats” with objective criteria.

  Section 41-03(a) makes observation of a condition conducive to rats prima facie evidence of a violation, and defines that term by a non-exhaustive list that includes “the presence of cracks, gaps or holes in building exteriors or interiors that enable the free movement of rats.” In a pre-war masonry building, that description is close to universal and is not meaningfully curable in the sense the rule contemplates. A violation should require evidence of an actual rat condition. We ask that the list be made exhaustive and that each item be given objective criteria an owner can inspect against and an inspector can apply consistently.

  4. Three further requests.

  Off-site sources. Provide that no violation issues where the person in control demonstrates that the rat activity originates from adjoining property, the public right-of-way, or the sewer system, and has reported that source to the Department.
  Compliance inspection timing. Confirm that the compliance inspection is scheduled to allow a licensed treatment cycle to take effect. Burrow treatment and baiting typically require repeat visits over several weeks; a re-inspection earlier than that measures nothing about the owner’s diligence.
  Cure period. The Mayor’s Office of Operations certified under Charter § 1043(d) that the rule “does not establish a violation, modification of a violation, or modification of the penalties associated with a violation,” and therefore provides no cure period. A provision that eliminates an otherwise-available defense to a violation modifies that violation. If the § 41-03(b) sentence is retained, we ask that the certification be revisited and a cure period provided.

  5. “Person in control.”

  Section 41-02 defines “person in control” to include the managing agent and the occupant. Where a conducive condition exists inside an occupied apartment — food storage, accumulated refuse, hoarding — the owner’s right of access is limited and it cannot compel a tenant’s conduct. The rule should say how it allocates responsibility in that circumstance rather than leaving three parties jointly exposed for a condition only one of them controls.

  We appreciate the opportunity to comment.

  Respectfully submitted,
  A manager of rent-stabilized multifamily housing in New York City

  Comment added September 14, 2026 12:07pm