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‘A raccoon is eating lasagna on my porch’ and other odd NYC complaints after 20 years of 311
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Mar 10, 2023
Modified Mar 10, 2023
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New York City Hall
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Mar 10, 2023
Modified Mar 10, 2023
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One New Yorker tried to file a noise complaint about their refrigerator. Another wanted to know how to boil a live chicken. Others asked if they could claim their pets as dependents on their tax returns, or what to do when a live goat was chained inside their apartment stairwell.
In its 20 years of operation, New York City’s 311 line has fielded 525 million service requests, according to a report released this week by City Hall to mark the popular city service's milestone anniversary. Most of the calls were routine complaints about noisy neighbors, heating outages or parking tickets.
But from time to time, New Yorkers dialed in with perplexing problems in need of solutions.
“A raccoon is eating lasagna on my porch,” a caller told a 311 operator in 2014.
In 2018, someone reported their neighbor “for waving to everyone on the block.”
And just last year, a resident inquired if they could “spray the trees so the leaves stop falling.”
It’s unclear if or how 311 operators were able to resolve their concerns.
Over its two-decade history, calls to the hotline spiked in the wake of citywide events, including an MTA strike in 2005, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. More than 3.5 million service requests came in after a historic 2010 blizzard that dumped more than 20 inches of snow across the boroughs – the most calls in 311's history.
During its first year of operation in 2003, 4.5 million callers used 311, or an average of about 15,000 calls a day. Last year, the line was contacted 35 million times over the app, online, calls and texts, with more than 95,993 requests daily.
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Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan is a former Gothamist reporter.
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