At night, you can hear them before you see them. Beneath piled trash bags comes the faint rustle and scratch that makes every Bostonian’s skin crawl — then the slick blur of fur and a long tail slipping into the gutter.
“The rats in our neighborhood are getting worse it seems every day,” one disgruntled Roxbury resident reported to 311 last week: “Fifteen years and I can’t remember it ever being this bad.”
Run-ins with rats are becoming more common as the chorus of complaints grows louder across Boston. A Globe analysis of 311 data shows rodent reports climbing steadily over the past four years, with 2025 on pace to be the rattiest year yet. Residents filed more than 5,000 reports in 2024 — about 1,000 more than the year before.
It’s been more than a year since the city of Boston launched the Boston Rodent Action Plan, which includes a slew of anti-rodent measures: rat-resistant trash bins, sewer traps, and new cameras and sensors placed around the city to track where rodents are most active.
But change comes slowly. City officials say it’s still too early to tell the results. In August, City Council also floated a proposal for a “rat czar” in Boston after New York City appointed one, but that effort fizzled.
“The goal was: how do we become more proactive,” said John Ulrich, assistant commissioner of the city’s Inspectional Services Department. “It’s really addressing … the supportive environment that allows rodents to thrive, mainly trash.”
Rodents can pose a serious public health risk. A Tufts University study published in April found that rat populations in Boston carry leptospirosis, a type of bacteria that can spread to humans, and in rare cases cause severe illness or death.
In the absence of an official “rat czar,” Viviano Cantu, a 12-year Boston resident who works for the tech company WHOOP, has taken up the mantle. He runs a website called rats.boston, which maps rodent and other critter complaints across the city.
For Cantu, the problem was personal.
When he and his wife were apartment hunting while expecting a baby, they nearly signed a lease on a place that seemed perfect — until they opened a closet and found a giant rat trap. A quick search of 311 data revealed dozens of rodent complaints about the restaurant next door and trash piling up in the alley.
“With a baby, that’s not gonna fly,” he said.
Using city data, his website helps identify rodent hot spots. Without the data, he said, “it’s not easy to understand where these problems are.”
Nowhere is the chorus of complaints louder than in the North End, where some residents are truly smelling a rat. The neighborhood tops the city for rat reports per square mile, with 619 reports since 2021 packed into less than a quarter of a square mile.
Its dense housing, narrow streets, and restaurant-lined blocks make it an irresistible haven for Boston’s most reviled neighbors.
“They’re everywhere,” said Yuri Jimenez, 42, who works in the North End and lives in neighboring West End. “It’s scary. You walk by the trash and they run out.”
The North End is followed by Beacon Hill, South End, and Back Bay in rodent complaints. Despite long being known as “rat city,” Allston didn’t crack the best five.
Neena Hagen can be reached at neena.hagen@globe.com.
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