ANY RATS?
Data-driven insights for apartment hunters
5 boroughs. 5 years. 18,455 violations
The most downloaded dataset on data.gov is lottery winning numbers (3,089 times).
What about rats? NYC publishes data on every restaurant violation, every rodent inspection, every 311 complaint — information that could tell you if a building has pest problems before you rent, buy, visit, or set up an office.
Nobody's packaging this data. So I did.
**Any Rats?** — Using overlooked public datasets to answer questions that actually matter. Whether you're making a decision or just curious which neighborhoods are the rattiest.
The Data
I pulled three NYC Open Data sources:
- Restaurant Inspections — 18,704 violations for rodent/mice presence (codes 04K, 04L)
- 311 Rat Sightings — Citizen complaints about rats from 2010-present
- Official Rodent Inspections — DOHMH inspection results
All free. All public. All barely used.
First look: Where are the violations?
The obvious starting point: count violations by borough.
Plot twist: Population density matters
But raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Manhattan has more violations, but it's also the most densely populated borough. What happens when we adjust for population?
Queens — the "quiet" borough — has the worst problem per capita. The Bronx? Cleanest.
Going deeper: Which specific neighborhoods?
NYC has 190 official neighborhoods. Here are the 20 where most rats were discovered.
Contact Me
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