Who’s winning New York City’s war on rats: rodents or trash bins?

City on track to record fewest reported rat sightings since pandemic as Mamdani’s ‘containerization’ program brings bins to boroughs Is New York finally winning its war on rats? Or are New Yorkers’ vermin neighbors merely adapting to changing circumstances and, at least in some neighborhoods, staying out of sight? With an estimated one rat for every three people, New York’s long-running rat war is in a period of uneasy detente. Last week Bloomberg reported that New York is on track to record the fewest reported rat sightings since the pandemic, down 22% in the first seven months of 2026 compared to a year earlier, a drop attributed to a “war on rats” campaign initiated by former mayor Eric Adams. The city’s population had spiked during the Coivd pandemic when rats flourished unchecked due to uncollected trash, an increase in take-out and delivery food, and outdoor dining sheds that provided snacks and refuge. As mayor, Adams was fixated on rats. His administration posted an advertisement for a “rat czar” that would require applicants to be “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” and possessed of both “stamina and stagecraft” and a “swashbuckling a