New York City Mayor Adams Appoints First Ever ‘Rat Czar’ Kathleen Corradi

New York City’s burgeoning rat problem has just reached “czar wars” level. New York City (NYC) Mayor Eric Adams has just appointed Kathleen Corradi to be the Big Apple’s so-called “Rat Czar,” the city’s first-ever citywide director of rodent mitigation. That shows just how big the rodent problem has become. After all, NYC does not have a hedgehog czar, a hippopotamus czar, or a Nile crocodile czar. And there are very few times when the statement, “we really need a Rat Czar,” is followed by “because things have been terrific.”

In a statement, Adams explained, “Kathy has the knowledge, drive, experience, and energy to send rats packing and create a cleaner more welcoming city for all New Yorkers.” He referenced a new investment to launch a Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone when he mentioned, “Beginning with this $3.5 million investment toward rodent mitigation in Harlem, Kathy will take the lead on our multi-agency effort to test new mitigation techniques, expand outreach and education efforts, and increase maintenance and remediation work. The rats are going to hate Kathy, but we’re excited to have her leading this important effort.”

No rats seemed to provide a formal statement in response to Adams announcement or Adams’ claim that they will hate Corradi. But an April 12 announcement from the NYC government did provide more details on Corradi’s new role: “In this newly created role, Corradi will coordinate across city government agencies, community organizations, and the private sector to reduce the rat population in New York City – building a cleaner, more welcoming city and tackling a major quality-of-life and health issue.”

Creating this new position wasn’t just some kind of random “czar trek.” Over the past several years, there have been anecdotal reports of more and more rats appearing and taking more and more liberties on NYC streets, in NYC buildings, and even in NYC toilets. In this case, rats refers to those furry rodents with tails and not humans who play intense politics and behave badly. There was, for example, this pizza footage that became an Internet meme in 2015:

That’s quite a pizza work. As you can see, this so-dubbed “pizza rat” was trying to drag a slice of pizza down a set of subway stairs in a fast and furriest way. But pizza pie-rats aren’t the only concern that such rodents bring. Rats roaming around the city aren’t exactly squeaky-clean. They can carry all sorts of things besides pizza. They can directly spread a number of different infectious diseases such as hantavirus, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, Lassa Fever, leptospirosis, Lujo hemorrhagic fever, lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCM), monkeypox Omsk hemorrhagic fever, Rat-Bite Fever, Salmonellosis, South American arenaviruses, Sylvatic typhus, and tularemia. By the way, getting something like Rat Bite Fever ain’t exactly the same as having Saturday Night Fever or Bieber Fever.

Rats also have a way of bugging people, so to speak. They can carry, be bitten by, or consume various ticks, mites, fleas, mosquitos, and other insects. These insects can in turn carry and spread infectious diseases such as anaplasmosis, angiostrongylus, babesiosis, borreliosis, Lyme disease, and the plague. None of these are good to have. No one should follow the words, “You have plague,” with “Congratulations!” In fact, in the announcement, NYC Department of Health and Mental Health Commissioner (DOHMH) Ashwin Vasan, MD, described rats as “the sworn enemies of public health.”

While Corradi is neither a rodentologist nor a scientist, she does have experience leading sustainability, sanitation, rodent and pest mitigation, and space utilization projects for the NYC Department of Education’s (DOE’s) Office of Sustainability. Corradi holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Eckerd College and a Master of Science in Urban Sustainability from The City College of New York and began her career as an elementary teacher in Central Brooklyn. The new position will have her reporting directly to Chief of Staff Camille Joseph Varlack.

The announcement also quoted Corradi as saying, “Rat mitigation is more than a quality-of-life issue for New Yorkers. Rats are a symptom of systemic issues, including sanitation, health, housing, and economic justice.” Her statement added, “As the first director of rodent mitigation, I’m excited to bring a science- and systems-based approach to fight rats. New York may be famous for the Pizza Rat, but rats, and the conditions that help them thrive will no longer be tolerated – no more dirty curbs, unmanaged spaces, or brazen burrowing.”

A science-and-systems-based approach makes sense, certainly more sense than the who-needs-science-and-only-look-at-one-thing-at-a-time approach that has often been used many times in many places throughout the U.S. in recent years. As Corradi alluded to, rats are not the root problem. Rats instead are signs that various systems are broken leaving things like unsanitary conditions and crumbling infrastructure. Accumulating garbage and cracks in building make it easier for rat populations to practice hide-and-go-squeak and flourish. Therefore, simply deploying rat traps and spraying poison all over the place isn’t going to solve the rat problem. It will be important to address and solve the actual root causes as well.

The Harlem Rat Mitigation Zone will encompass much of northern Manhattan. In this zone, the city will exert even more intense efforts to control the rat population in this area that covers 28 NYC Housing Authority properties, 73 NYC Parks locations, nearly 70 DOE schools, and over 10,000 private properties. This will include assigning staff to regularly inspect public spaces, clean those areas, and exterminate rats and providing equipment and supplies such as tilt trucks, baits, traps, sensors, fumigation machines, rat ice, wire lathes, and “Rat Slabs.” Additionally, the city will offer Harlem-specific “Rat Academies.”

Time will tell how much of a ro-dent the appointment of a Rat Czar will have on NYC’s rat problem. Last year, NYC came in second right after Chicago in Orkin’s Top 50 Rattiest Cities List based on the number of new rodent treatments performed from September 1, 2021, to August 31, 2022. The Big Apple was just ahead of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Naturally, this is a list where you want to see how low you can go. After all, no city wants to win this rat race.