Rats Swarm, Dig, Chew Through Bed-Stuy Block: Residents

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Swarms of rats have frustrations running high on a Bed-Stuy block, and not just from the rodents digging burrows, chewing car wires and jumping out of garbage cans.

It's the city's lack of response to the infestation that has Jefferson Avenue residents like Tiffany Joy Murchison exasperated.

A News 12 story first reported about the block's problem this week, but Murchison said since then the rats continue to scurry unfettered up and down the block between Nostrand and Bedford..

"Nobody has contacted me from the city, nothing at all," Murchison said. "It's frustrating."

Rat problems are obviously nothing new in Brooklyn or New York City as a whole. But Murchison said a rodent rampage like that on her block wouldn't last long in Park Slope or Boerum Hill before the city stepped in.

Jefferson Avenue residents have had rats chew through the wires under their car hoods or garbage cans — sometimes many times over. One homeowner received a $300 fine from the city for rat burrows in her front yard, Murchison said and News 12 reported.

Cash-strapped homeowners and tenants have resorted to calling exterminators and using special rat-repelling mint-scented products, Murchison said.

"Every house just about on this block except for a few has rat traps up in the front," she said. "Some of them have two or three."

Brooklyn's rat problem made headlines last year when borough President Eric Adams made a gruesome demonstration at Borough Hall. He unveiled alcohol-filled vats that trap rats, drown them and contain their slurried corpses.

A spokesperson for Adams said the borough president's office hadn't received specific complaints from Jefferson Avenue, but acknowledged "major concerns" with rats in Bed-Stuy and other Brooklyn neighborhoods. He said the rat trap program is on a six-month pilot program and directed Patch to the Bedford-Stuyvesant Business Improvement District as to whether they would be installed on Jefferson.

The BID didn't return a call for comment.

Murchison hopes someone responds to the neighborhood's complaints.

"We’re really hoping to get some traction," she said.