New York City residents filed 81,781 rodent complaints with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since January 2024. We pulled every record from NYC Open Data to find out what actually happens after you hit submit.
The results are surprising.
40% of Rat Complaints Are Closed as Duplicates
Among rat complaints that have been closed since January 2024, the single most common resolution isn’t an inspection or a violation. It’s a closure marked “duplicate.”
What happens after you file a DOHMH rat complaint:
| Outcome | Share |
|---|---|
| Closed as duplicate | 40.0% |
| Violations found and issued | 27.7% |
| Inspected — no violations found | 20.7% |
| Couldn’t access the site | 5.7% |
| Passed with minor violations | 2.2% |
Four in ten complaints are closed because an earlier complaint for the same location is already open. The original stays open. Your complaint is marked resolved. Nothing changes for you.
This pattern will be familiar to anyone who followed our analysis of NYC heat complaints — HPD uses the same duplicate-closure mechanism for 28.4% of heat complaints citywide. It turns out it’s not specific to heat. It’s how NYC’s 311 system handles volume at scale.
The practical implication: if you file a rat complaint and your neighbor already filed one, your complaint will likely be closed as a duplicate of theirs. The original complaint stays open — but you’ll have no way of knowing that from your closed status notification.
New Yorkers Report Rats on Monday Mornings
Rat complaints follow a remarkably consistent weekly pattern:
| Day | Complaints |
|---|---|
| Monday | 13,912 |
| Tuesday | 13,258 |
| Wednesday | 12,790 |
| Thursday | 12,642 |
| Friday | 11,893 |
| Saturday | 8,379 |
| Sunday | 8,907 |
Monday is the peak rat-reporting day. Weekends see 35-40% fewer complaints than weekdays — not because rats disappear on Saturdays, but because New Yorkers notice rats during their weekday routines and report them immediately.
The Monday spike specifically suggests people are seeing rats on their morning commute — in subway stations, near trash on the curb, in building hallways — and filing the complaint before they get to work.
What People Are Actually Reporting
Not all rat complaints are the same:
| Complaint Type | Share |
|---|---|
| Rat Sighting | 63.9% (52,283) |
| Condition Attracting Rodents | 19.0% (15,524) |
| Signs of Rodents | 12.5% (10,246) |
| Mouse Sighting | 4.6% (3,727) |
Nearly two-thirds of complaints are direct sightings — someone saw a rat. But 19% are about conditions: overflowing trash, uncovered bins, food waste left curbside. These are complaints about the environment that attracts rats, not rats themselves.
The “Signs of Rodents” category — droppings, burrow holes, gnaw marks — accounts for 12.5%. These are often filed by tenants who haven’t seen a rat but have clear evidence of activity inside their building. If you’re in that situation, see what to do if you see a rat in NYC.
East Harlem Leads the City. The Bronx Barely Registers.
The neighborhood with the most rat complaints in NYC since 2024 is not in the Bronx.
Top neighborhoods for DOHMH rodent complaints:
| Rank | Neighborhood | Borough | Complaints |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | East Harlem | Manhattan | 4,442 |
| 2 | Bed-Stuy | Brooklyn | 3,747 |
| 3 | Central Harlem | Manhattan | 3,273 |
| 4 | Upper West Side | Manhattan | 3,061 |
| 5 | Williamsburg / Greenpoint | Brooklyn | 2,868 |
East Harlem leads at 4,442 complaints. Bed-Stuy is #2. No Bronx neighborhood appears in the top 13.
This seems to contradict the common perception of the Bronx as NYC’s rat capital. The explanation is in the data itself: the Bronx dominates HPD indoor pest infestation complaints (33% of citywide total) — building-level infestations that tenants report to their landlord’s regulatory agency. But for outdoor rat sightings reported to DOHMH, Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods lead.
Rodent complaints by borough (DOHMH, since 2024):
| Borough | Complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Brooklyn | 30,079 | 36.8% |
| Manhattan | 21,424 | 26.2% |
| Queens | 14,652 | 17.9% |
| Bronx | 12,824 | 15.7% |
| Staten Island | 2,801 | 3.4% |
Brooklyn accounts for 37% of outdoor rodent complaints — but when it comes to indoor pest infestation complaints filed with HPD, the Bronx leads at 33%. Two different kinds of rat problems. Two different agencies. Two different geographies. For how rats get into NYC apartments specifically, the HPD indoor complaint data tells a very different story than these DOHMH outdoor numbers.
When Inspectors Show Up, They Find Rats 17% of the Time
DOHMH inspectors conducted 549,548 field inspections since 2024. In 17.3% of them — 95,131 inspections — they confirmed live rat activity. These are dedicated city rodent inspectors on a recurring schedule — distinct from the private home inspectors who check for rats during a sale or rental walkthrough, whose checks are far less systematic.
57% of inspections passed with no rat activity found. 12.3% resulted in bait being applied, meaning active treatment was already underway.
One notable finding: in 5.7% of field inspections, DOHMH inspectors couldn’t access the site — leaving those locations uninspected and the complaints unresolved. If you file a complaint about a private property and the owner won’t provide access, the inspection can’t happen.
How to Check Your Building
DOHMH outdoor rat complaints track street-level activity. If you want to see indoor pest infestation complaints for a specific building — the kind filed by tenants against landlords — you can search any NYC address free at 311tracker.com.
Our database covers 834,400 NYC buildings with 1.9M HPD complaints updated daily. Each building page shows its full pest complaint history, HPD violation record, and complaint trend over time.
Data Methodology
Data source: NYC 311 Service Requests (NYC Open Data,
dataset erm2-nwe9), filtered to agency DOHMH and
complaint type “Rodent.” Date range: January 1, 2024
to June 2026. Total complaints: 81,781.
Inspection data: NYC DOHMH Rodent Inspections
(dataset p937-wjvj), 549,548 inspections since 2024.
This data covers DOHMH-routed outdoor/street-level rodent complaints. HPD indoor pest infestation complaints (building conditions, landlord enforcement) are tracked separately at 311tracker.com/data.
Contact: [email protected] for data requests.