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With one foot already edging towards the exit, Mayor Eric Adams has done a very New York thing: he’s created a permanent office to keep fighting rats after he’s gone.
This week, Adams signed Executive Order No. 63, which formally establishes the Mayor’s Office of Rodent Mitigation, the first stand-alone mayoral office in city history devoted entirely to rats. It’s the bureaucratic capstone to Adams’ much-publicized “War on Rats” and it answers a lingering question many New Yorkers have asked since the city appointed its first “rat czar” two years ago: what actually happens next?
In short, the new office is meant to make the recent anti-rat push harder to undo.
Until now, rodent control has primarily lived inside the Department of Sanitation, Health Department, Parks, NYCHA and a rotating cast of task forces. The new Office of Rodent Mitigation centralizes oversight and coordination inside City Hall, led by a mayor-appointed director—a role first established under Kathleen Corradi, the city’s inaugural “rat czar,” who left earlier this year.
Rather than trapping rats itself, the office’s job is coordination. It sets citywide strategy, pushes agencies to close the gaps that allow infestations to thrive and makes sure that sanitation rules, enforcement, landscaping, housing maintenance and pest control contracts work together. It’s less “exterminator with a net” and more air-traffic controller for every city agency that touches trash, soil, buildings and food waste.
The office will also become the hub for public education and community outreach, including Rat Academies, volunteer “rat walks” and the NYC Rat Pack program, which is Adams’ attempt to turn everyday New Yorkers into anti-rat foot soldiers. Academic partners and pest-management professionals are also involved, testing tools like burrow treatments, sensors, non-toxic controls and using new construction techniques designed to make streets and tree beds less appealing to rodents in the first place.
City Hall says the model is working. According to the latest Mayor’s Management Report, inspections showing active rat signs are at a five-year low and reported rat sightings have declined for 12 straight months. Containerizing trash, which now covers roughly 70 percent of the city’s waste, has been the biggest lever, along with stricter rules for businesses and targeted mitigation zones like Harlem.
By creating a mayoral office rather than another pilot program, Adams is trying to lock in those gains. Rats, after all, are famously patient. This office is designed to be, too.