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Mayor Adams ordered to pay $300 for rat infestation at Brooklyn home
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Feb 14, 2023
Modified Feb 14, 2023
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Luiz Rampelotto/Europa Newswire/Shutterstock
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Feb 14, 2023
Modified Feb 14, 2023
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Mayor Eric Adams has lost a battle in his war on rats.
Adams has been ordered to pay a $300 fine for a rat infestation at his Brooklyn home – despite his arguments that he’d done all he could to rodent-proof the residence.
Sam Chetrit, a hearing officer with OATH, the city’s administrative law court, ruled in a decision released Tuesday that Adams failed to follow waste management laws requiring recyclables be stored in an airtight receptacle. A city inspector issued a summons to Adams in December for bags of recycling left in a fenced-in concrete yard in the front of the four-story home in Bed-Stuy, describing the mess as "harborage conditions that encourage the nesting of rats.”
“Whether food waste was present in the bags is irrelevant, and I find that the presence of several bags on the ground could provide shelter or protection for rodents, which amounts to a harborage condition,” Chetrit wrote.
Mayor Adams' Brooklyn home is a major front in his war on rats.
Jake Offenhartz/Gothamist
Chetrit said that Adams’ claims that he’d consulted with the Department of Sanitation about his proper disposal of recycling and added a recycling receptacle after the violation was issued were not “a valid defense.”
However, Chetrit dismissed a second summons for “an active rat runway” at Adams’ home, noting that the mayor presented “credible proof of ongoing efforts to prevent and control rat infestation before the issuance of the summons.”
During a remote hearing at the city’s administrative law court last week, the mayor blamed a rat burrow on a next-door neighbor while arguing that the bags of recyclables did not pose a risk of attracting rodents.
Mayor Adams installed a rat-killing contraption outside his Brooklyn home after he was hit with the summonses.
Jake Offenhartz
Adams has made rodent reduction a central part of his mayoralty. But killing the critters at his own home has not been easy. Last year, he beat a different $300 violation after a health inspector observed “fresh rat droppings” on his property. He was also fined for allowing trash to accumulate outside his home in 2012 and 2013, though both tickets were later dismissed.
When he was hit with the two latest violations, Adams vowed to dispute them, linking his struggle against city bureaucracy to his larger battle against the hordes of rodents.
“I will again challenge these violations and show that rats don’t run this city,” he said.
Adams can appeal the ruling.
"The mayor is grateful that one of the two summonses was dismissed, and he is reviewing the second decision. One decision is clear, however: The mayor still hates rats," Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said in a statement.
Tagged
brooklyn
sanitation
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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