Mayor Eric Adams blamed rats — along with the cost of living and COVID-19 — as big reasons why New Yorkers are fleeing the state in droves according to a recent report, he said Thursday.
Hizzoner pointed the finger at the Big Apple’s notorious rodent population after sobering new United States Census Bureau statistics revealed nearly 102,000 people had high-tailed it out of the Empire State within the last year.
“Some people who have children and families decide they want to go to a place where their children can play outdoors, larger green spaces, you want to see animals — you don’t see animals except for rats in New York,” Adams said when asked about the plunging population data.
“So there’s a combination of things,” he said, adding: “And we are getting rid of those rats, by the way.”
The mayor, who has repeatedly declared “I hate rats” and said confessed to being “fixated on killing” them, has long waged a war against his old foe.
He’s even gone as far as establishing the city’s first-ever “rat czar” to help stamp out Gotham’s pesky vermin population.
Still, Adams — who insisted Thursday that the city was still working to eliminate the vermin problem — acknowledged that the sky-rocketing costs of living could also be to blame for the recent net-decline in residents.
“I think there’s a combination of why people are leaving the city. The cities have become unaffordable and, you know, people who left the city during COVID for a short period of time and some decided that they no longer want to come back into cities,” Adams said.
“You [also] have the remote work option where you don’t have to be in an office space to do the job. You can do it from wherever and so there’s a perfect storm of reasons that cities are losing their population.” --->READ MORE HERE
Yesterday, I was chatting with two grammar school friends, who live on the Jersey Shore.
One suggested they come into the city to meet me for holiday cocktails — but the other protested. “You couldn’t pay me enough to visit that rat-infested hellhole,” he said.
After more than two decades of living in New York City, I am used to some variation of that sentiment — especially since the pandemic.
Normally, I laugh and move on. Sure, but it’s my rat-infested hellhole.
For once, however, I had to agree wholeheartedly.
Three years on from Covid lockdowns, the city somehow looks even shabbier. The streets are back to people capacity, but we’re outmatched by bustling rat colonies.
Garbage bags are piled all over the sidewalks. The once quaint picturesque streets of Soho — where I lived for 16 years — are cluttered with graffitied restaurant shelters and litter. The old hood could use a good bleach scrub.
Then there’s Sixth Avenue (and Fifth for that matter) in Midtown and the Brooklyn Bridge, both of which now resemble medieval open-air bazaars. For the last month, I’ve had many out of town visitors, which meant venturing out to these spots regularly.
And the degradation is as striking as it is disheartening.
The Brooklyn Bridge is a bottleneck of selfie-snapping tourists, shopping from vendors selling tacky tchotkes on folding tables. A flea market on our historic marvel.
Sixth Avenue, which is usually made grand this time of year by the corporate buildings’ glitzy holiday display, is a gauntlet of filth. --->READ MORE HERE
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