A number of residents who live at and adjacent to 3440 Gates Place in Norwood are living in fear of rats which they said are frequenting the alleyway where the garbage is stored, adjacent to the building. At least one rat has entered the basement of an adjacent home, and though the residents have allegedly complained to the super at 3440 Gates Place, to the landlord, 3440 Holdings LLC, and to a number of city agencies, they have yet to receive a satisfactory response. One resident said the situation is already a health hazard.

The residents, who wish to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, attribute the arrival of the rats to overflowing garbage which they said regularly piles up in the adjacent alleyway, and said trash management at the site is not being handled in a timely or correct manner.

A review of recent 311 service calls logged by residents in relation to 3440 Gates Place shows they are numerous, and cite poor sanitation and rodent sightings as the main reason for the complaints. Most have been closed because the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOH) already received similar complaints for the same location.

One 69-year-old female resident, who lives in a ground floor dwelling adjacent to 3440 Gates Place, has lived in her home, which she owns, since 1985. She said this is the first year she has encountered rats in her building. “I’ve never had a problem with rodents at all, not even in my house,” she said. “I don’t have roaches. I don’t have mice.” Asked when the problem began, she said, “The rats? Sept. 30 is when I started noticing them, but the garbage, this has been going on for years.”

Indeed, prior inspection records from DOH’s Rat Information Portal show that an inspection of 3440 Gates Place was carried on July 25, 2019, and the report showed “problem conditions,” in relation to rodent management.

The female neighbor, who told Norwood News she has a health condition, said she logged complaints with 311 but to no avail so far. When she followed up by phone, she said she was told her ticket had been closed as other tenants had also filed complaints about rats at the same address. “I’ve called 311,” she said. “I’ve called the health department and it’s getting ridiculous.”

The dividing alleyway between the two buildings is not part of the neighbor’s property, and the woman said she does not use the alleyway for her own trash. She said she has a separate area on her property for her own garbage, which she said she manages, cleans and stores correctly.

According to City regulations, a two-inch distance should be maintained between the female neighbor’s exterior, side wall and anything placed in front of it. Despite this, the woman said the super from 3440 Gates Place places the neighbors’ trash containers, as well as piles of loose trash right up against her exterior wall underneath her window, and allows it to pile up. She said she would prefer if the neighbors’ trash containers were placed on the opposite side of the alleyway against their exterior wall but the building’s super allegedly told her that he can place the trash anywhere in the alleyway he wants.

The neighbor said she asked the super to address the trash situation many times, but their interactions often ended in arguments, with him allegedly telling her to mind her own business. Asked what he would say when she raised the issue of the trash and the rats with him, the resident said he would say, “Oh it’s going out tonight, because tomorrow is recycle day. It’s going out tonight.” However, she said that if she came back the next day, she would still see the trash/recycling in the alleyway.

The neighbor added that when the super empties the neighbors’ trash containers, he only removes the top layer of garbage and leaves the remainder. She said not all the trash is covered either and she believes this is what is drawing the rats, which usually come out at night. She said as the trash piles up underneath her window, she can hear the rats rustling at night-time, and is fearful they may enter her home again, either through a window or by some other means.

Aside from the risk of attracting rodents from the build up of trash, the resident said food also gets stuck to her wall causing the alleyway to become unhygienic, and even when the trash containers are removed, she said the containers, yard and walls are not being hosed down.

She told the Norwood News that the super apparently told the landlord that some tenants at 3440 Gates Place throw their trash onto the alleyway from their apartment windows, instead of leaving it on the street, in front of the building, as instructed, and that this was what was causing the mess in the alleyway, as sometimes the bags burst and the contents spilled out across the yard.

She was not wholly enamored with the revised arrangement of her neighbors leaving their trash on the street in front of 3440 Gates Place, since she believes this is also drawing rats to the area but she also appeared exasperated with the idea of them throwing it from the windows. “How you going to throw big garbage bags out the window?” she said, adding that she has sometimes also found trash bags belonging to her neighbors on the roof of her building.

Prior to the arrangement of asking the tenants to leave the trash on the street in front of the building, the neighbor said the super allegedly said that some tenants would throw their garbage into the yard from the alleyway’s ground floor entrance, and the bags would again break and their contents scatter across the yard. Because of this, she said the super allegedly no longer provides a key to the alleyway to the residents of 3440 Gates Place, which is why they now put it out on the street in front of the building.

Norwood News reached out to the New York City’s Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for its view on the 311 complaints about rodent sightings and was informed that if the landlord was not reacting, the next course of action would be for the tenants to take the case to Housing Court.

Meanwhile, the female resident who lives adjacent to 3440 Gates Place said when she told a Con Edison representative about the rat which had entered her basement from the adjacent yard, he refused to enter the basement to read her meter. She said her son helped her dispose of the rat.

This is not the first time complaints have been raised about rats in Norwood. They were seen and recorded more than once, on Jerome Avenue and Bedford Park Boulevard, as well as in Williamsbridge Oval Park, as reported by Norwood News, and at the Bronx Community Board 7 October Sanitation Committee meeting, it was reported that a rat was seen by another resident in the park’s playground.

A rat was also witnessed rustling in some garbage in mid November at street level between Putnam Place and Wayne Avenue along Reservoir Oval West. In addition, Bronx News12 reported in October that rats were seen in the window of a store on the corner of 204th Street and Hull Avenue.

As previously reported by Norwood News, waste360.com cited a New York City Department of Sanitation budget cut of $106 million dollars earlier this year, and the reduced frequency of trash pick up across the city has caused concern at different CB7 Parks and Sanitation meetings.

According to waste360.com, with so many residents working from home, and disposing of more trash than usual, it has caused  trash to build up in the outer boroughs. Additionally, until the cold weather set in, many people were eating in parks and not disposing of trash correctly. Meanwhile, Waste 360 wrote that for those residents in wealthier zip codes (such as those in Manhattan), reduced tourism and the closure of offices has allowed those neighborhoods to stay free of waste build-up.

In a Sept. 8 Wall Street Journal article, it was reported that former New York City Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia announced her resignation, saying she could no longer serve in her post because the recent budget cuts to her agency would imperil the city’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. She is now running for mayor.

Back in Norwood, when asked what the City’s health department told the female neighbor when she contacted them about her neighbors’ non-action in relation to the trash situation, she said, “They gave them a summons of non-compliance, which is on display inside the building.”

She said three inspections were carried out in Aug, Sept, and Oct but to date, the landlord does not appear to have addressed the issue. Last month, an exterminator was due to come to the building. On Nov. 19, Norwood News saw a notice from First Choice Exterminating who perform pest control services posted at 3440 Gates Place requesting availability for a visit and proposing some possible times. We were unable to confirm if the visit took place finally or not.

In the meantime, Norwood News has also reached out the City’s health department for comment. We did not receive an immediate response.

Meanwhile, the female neighbor said if the rat problem is not resolved soon, she is afraid the value of her property will fall. She said she thought she might receive some form of redress when she contacted the City’s Finance department, but was told there was nothing they could do as long as the landlord was paying his taxes and rates.

Her main concern, however, is that the rats will bring disease or simply get into her home. She said they seem bigger than the one she found in her basement, and that even the alley cats are afraid of them. She added that other tenants who are afraid to speak out have thanked her for taking action.

Norwood News reached out twice to the landlord, 3440 Holdings LLC, based at 314 McDonald’s Ave in Brooklyn, and which filed as a domestic limited liability company in the State of New York on Tuesday, October 15, 1996, according to public records filed with New York Department of State.

A representative from the company said they had no comment. We asked if the representative could provide us with a contact number for the building’s super, and were told it was not the company’s policy to do so. They asked us to stop calling.

The contact number listed for the super at 3440 Gates Place in Norwood is that of the landlord. Norwood News was unable to reach the super for comment through other means.

Asked if she planned on moving out because of the issue, the neighbor said, “No! I own this home. Why should I move? Why should I be put out? I’ve been here since 1985. I’ve never dealt with this before.”

*David Greene provided additional reporting. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.