- Lucy Hooker
- Business Correspondent, BBC News
image source, Getty Images
On top of all the problems New York has faced in 2021, add an infestation of rats.
Diem Boyd was sitting outside a restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood in September when a pack of rats scrambled between her feet.
“Within a few seconds we all jumped,” he says. “We lost our appetite.”
Everyone in New York has a similar story to tell, he explains. “We’re going through a complete and total rat explosion.”
“You see them when you go out at night,” agrees Deborah González, who, like Diem, lives in southeast Manhattan. “When you walk down this block you see them running from one side to the other.”
It is difficult to calculate precise figures, but calls to the New York City complaint line mentioning rodents have increased sharply this year: they are 15% above pre-pandemic levels.
“It’s obvious that New York has always had rats,” says Marcell Rocha, who also lives in the neighborhood, but now “they are bigger and more daring, and they jump in front of you. They are gymnasts, they do somersaults.”
Diem, Marcell and Deborah object to the way restaurants have taken over the streets in their neighborhood.
So what has changed?
Diem, Deborah, and Marcell blame this new plague squarely on the al fresco dining craze that became popular in the city during the pandemic, encouraging many more people to eat at outside tables.
Hundreds of streets in New York are full -on both sides- of booths built for this use, completely changing the appearance of the urban landscape. Hthere are more than 11,000 new cookouts.
Some of these venues have little more than a frame and a few seats, others have more solid structures with floors, lanterns, flower pots and electric heaters.
Hundreds of streets in New York are lined with booths made for outdoor dining.
Diem, Deborah and Marcell state that the booths generate “mile-long” piles of black plastic garbage bags that accumulate on the sidewalks and provide the perfect den for rats under his parquet.
However, these venues have become immensely popular with the clientele in the last year and a half. In fact, too popular for the locals.
“This is hell because of the crowds and the noise,” Marcell complains. The Southeast Sector has always been a lively neighborhood, but this past summer it felt like “living at a festival,” he explained.
At the start of the pandemic, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the program “Open Restaurants”. It was part of a larger vision of a city less dominated by car traffic and more focused on residents and visitors. But above all, it was a lifesaver for the hotel and restaurant industry.
Residents are concerned that the outdoor dining craze is creating access and litter problems.
And while the initial permission to set up outdoor dining areas was a temporary emergency measure, in late 2020, when indoor service began to resume, the mayor announced that wanted to make outdoor dining a broad and permanent model.
“Open Restaurants was a big, bold experiment in support of a vital industry and the redesign of our public space, and it worked,” said Bill de Blasio.
“As we begin a long-term recovery, we are proud to extend and expand this effort to keep New York the most vibrant city in the world.”
The City Council – the elected body that manages the affairs of New York – is currently in the process of debating and voting to withdraw urban land management regulations that limit outdoor dining.
That measure has Diem, Marcell and Deborah inflamed. They maintain that a proper assessment of the impact of the booths has not been carried out. the restaurants. They and another group of more than a dozen residents have filed a lawsuit to try to force the city to take a closer look at the effect a permanent expansion of outdoor dining and socializing will have.
“That wasn’t the plan,” Deborah argues. She adds that when the emergency program was launched, residents supported it, in the interest of supporting the struggling hotel and restaurant sector. But now they feel that their opinions are being ignored.
image source, Dear Arntzen
Some residents are demanding a reassessment of the impact of outdoor dining.
Say what the rats, the crowds, the threw ups and dirt are very annoyingbut they are also concerned regarding the problem of older residents trying to navigate congested sidewalks.
Fire trucks have to slow down to a crawl on streets that have restaurant booths, he says. Others have made similar complaints, and in May the New York City Fire Department tweeted that the booths had slowed them down to the scene of a fire at a Chinese restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
From Chinatown to Queens, from Brooklyn to Greenwich Village, residents are demanding a reassessment of the impact of outdoor dining.
Some say it is altering the fundamental character of neighborhoods that were not previously dominated by noisy nightlife. In other areas, existing problems are being exacerbated.
As the weather has turned colder, the sheds have been covered in plastic sheeting, defeating the original purpose of health and safety in a well-ventilated space. Now you can see graffiti written on the booths, some of which are no longer in use and are falling into disrepair.
“It’s like a favela”Diem points out.
But not everyone sees it that way.
Jacob Siwak, head chef and owner of the Italian restaurant Forsythia, across the street from where Deborah lives, finds the criticism of the cookout program infuriating.
“I find it crazy that people are focusing on these minutiae, which can be slightly negative, when there are so many radically positive aspects“, he maintains.
Jacob, head chef and owner of Forsythia, says there are big benefits to the program.
Siwak says he is sure his restaurant has added value to the entire block. “And it allows me to employ more people. I have a lot of regular people that I can pay a living wage in New York.”
There are rules regarding how much of the street you can occupy to put your booth, he says, the equivalent of the width of a parked car. So he thinks the complaints regarding emergency vehicles having difficulty getting through are “invalid.”
He acknowledges that New York has a problem with garbage collection, but says that the food booths are not to blame. And his restaurant isn’t making the situation any worse. “We use ceramic plates, linen napkins and metal cutlery. We are not accumulating garbage,” she says.
Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York Hotel Alliance says that making the cookout program permanent might be the catalyst the city needs to tackle the long-standing garbage problem.
image source, Getty Images
Rats are part of the New York landscape.
New Yorkers leave most of their garbage on the side of the street in black plastic bags to be collected by public or private firms – depending on whether it is household or commercial garbage – a system that has been disrupted by the pandemic and the bins .
Riggie agrees that the system needs improvement, but says that shouldn’t get in the way of outdoor dining.
“The current reality is that restaurants and the public enjoy outdoor dining. There is demand to make it permanent.”
But the current temporary program – established during the height of the crisis – will not become permanent. However, a new list of standards and regulations is being forged to address residents’ concernsincluding housekeeping practices, nighttime noise, and activities that will be permitted.
Restaurant and bar owners say the booths have allowed them to keep more people employed during the pandemic.
“Will people have different opinions regarding whether or not they want different types of street activity? Of course. New York City is a large, complex place with many competing uses for public space,” he says.
The city informed that the key principles of the program will be accessibility, appearance -including cleanliness and equality-, allowing the participation of all neighborhoods, guaranteeing that the restaurant set-ups function in the context and security of the neighborhood, including access for emergency vehicles.
The Transportation Department, which will oversee the permanent program, and the Planning Department launched a consultation asking New Yorkers for input on how best to achieve those goals.
“The incredible success of outdoor dining shows how we can reimagine our urban environment to better serve our neighborhoods,” said Department of Transportation Commissioner Hank Gutman.
Gutman says he will consult with the public to “come up with guidelines” that will increase access and safety and address issues like noise, hours of operation and cleanliness.
But many residents remain deeply skeptical. They say the consultation will not reach many parts of the community, especially those who are not active on the internet. They maintain that the program has been poorly policed and think that the same will happen with a new one.
Even if stricter conditions are agreed and enforced, they are suspicious of the forces behind the scenes.
“This is no longer regarding recovery,” says Diem. “Doubling the capacity of restaurants by allowing them free use of the streets means that owners they are being awarded the largest expropriation of public land in the history of New York City“.
They will be able to raise rents and, as a result, favor bars and restaurants over small businesses, he argues, further undermining the character of many neighborhoods.
“Basically, that’s our argument, other than that it’s a public health hazard, at all levels,” says Diem. “This is for the benefit of developers and landlords at the expense of ordinary New Yorkers.”
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