NYC Has an Infestation Problem… Why? 

Infested with corrupt politicians.

People pay outrageous rents to live in filth, doesn't make sense to me.

Avoid movie theaters; once the lights go down, the bed bugs become active. Bed bugs can crawl off of a host, or out of a cushion and onto you. Makes my skin crawl!

Your report is much better than those news channels. Very clever!!!

I was home about a month ago. As someone born and raised in NYC the amount of both trash and rats was insane to me. To say it was bad was an understatement.

Influencers glamorize NYC. Cash keeps it real

I worked for years in a mountain resort community and we had a problem with bears. They would get into the trash containers and scatter trash while teaching their young that was their source of food. It took much work to prevent the bear from getting to the trash containers and when we were able to accomplish that the humans were to lazy to open the closed area and would just throw their trash on the top of the enclosure. You can put all the trash containers you want around your city but the people have to be retrained to not be lazy bums and use them correctly.

Every one of these videos makes me so happy about my life.

I have lived in and around NYC my whole life, and to this day, I still do not understand why New Yorkers pile trash bags on the sidewalk. It’s totally absurd.

In Istanbul, Turkiye, with nearly 18 million population, there is no rats problem with the help of our beautiful stray cats. We care about our stray cats, feed them, take care of their health by people and government and they do their job very well to protect our cities from infestation 🐈😻🧹🐀

A relative of mine lives in a senior building in Bklyn and it has rats. The maintenance guy is not able to help. It’s sad 😮

Lifelong NYC resident, I just watched a video about Singapore. I was jealous, I couldn’t believe how clean it was!

Cash, you've taken a "simple" real-estate channel and evolved it into a superb documentary channel about life in a big city. I don't know what you're educational background is, but you make a great reporter and correspondent. Keep on keeping on!

I’m 45 and it’s been the same rat problem in NYC for as long as I can remember. Same complaints, same trash and same dumb city officials

What New York needs is more "Cats" on Broadway.

This is why my arms hurt as a kid when we were traveling. My parents immediately checked for bed bugs and we had to carry all our stuff and theirs as they checked the room. Great content, I enjoyed listening. Thank you for sharing!

In Gibraltar where I'm from, most of the community comes together once a year to clean up the environment and nature reserves voluntarily. It's a wild comparison but I don't understand why there is so much trash.

In the olden days, I remember seeing pictures of people sweeping the sidewalks and streets in front of their houses. Now we depend on the government to clean up after us. Apparently, government is not able to keep up with the slobs who don't care to clean up after themselves.

I had a mouse living with me for like 1 year back in 2016/7 and that was so bad. I was constantly scared it would bring friends back or reproduce. In the end it either left or died in the walls because after I took the time to basically hermetically seal my flat it vanished. Was actually horrible, I used to hear it running through my room and banging against my headboard when I was trying to go to sleep. At the very beginning when I didn't know for sure if there was something in the flat or just in the walls it had taken to living IN MY BEDROOM WITH ME in a bookcase. It actually raises my anxiety just thinking about it 🤣

When I lived in NYC, the vermin problem was pretty bad, but now it seems out of control. Back then, the rule of thumb was to never rent in a building with a restaurant or bodega downstairs. I'm glad that Cash addressed the problem with food service places in this excellent video. My only disagreement would be is that it's an exercise in futility to check a restaurant's cleanliness, no matter how expensive and fancy shmancy they are. There's always slippage in the best of them. To be safe, avoid those buildings all together. I remember a garbage workers strike being settled fast because of the piled up garbage attracting rats. There was talk of the potential of bubonic plague because of the fleas the rats could be carrying. I kid you not. NYC really needs to address this whole problem, because bedbugs could be awaiting you at the Plaza.

My coworker who lived there and delivered food to the restaurants, said ALL of them are rat infested. YIKES

"I don't think rats can pick locks." Don't be too certain of that.

I like to watch your videos because it’s crazy comparing what it’s like to live in NYC to other parts of America. I’m not sure why anyone is staying there at this point. We vacationed there in 2014 & it was awful then. There are amazing places you can raise your children out here. I hope you find your way out of there.

dude! I've been binging your channel. Such great content.

Telling one building owner that he has to containerize while the owner next door doesn't is a really stupid idea that will never work.

I can’t believe a major city like NYC is so far behind the times. I live in Florida. We’ve had the garbage and recycling containers with automated pickup for around 20 years here, and I’m in a rural suburb. Any apartment buildings have either trash compactors or dumpsters. Putting out garbage bags will get you fined. You’d think a big city would be ahead of us in technology.

The fact NY City dose NOT have a unified trash system should tell you everything you need to know to NOT live there. My city has had the auto lifters for trash for over 6 yrs now

I’m Australian but I lived in Manhattan for almost 10 years. I think part of the issue is that the trash is in the streets in bags and not in big bins like in other countries. When you lay in bed at night, you hear the rats fighting outside 😮 When it snows, the trash bags just pile up into giant mountains, right outside the entrance of your building, because the trucks can’t get through at all, sometimes for weeks. I never understood why they didn’t have big wheelie bins, its not rocket science to know it would help the rat problem, but they just had the trash in bags on the street 🤷‍♀️Sounds like finally they are changing that! It’s really interesting to see how NYC has changed since I was there 15 years ago, thank you for doing your videos, I really appreciate them.

This is what happens when you leave garbage laying in the streets for pickup. I live in Vancouver Canada right downtown and hardly ever see rats. We have thick steel bins that get collected regularly that are fairly rat proof.

This is the reason I want to pay $6K a month for a home the size of a closet. Wonderful.

Thank you for posting content that’s true!!!

I love your videos! Appreciate a logical approach that isn’t over sensationalized about our societal issues. Weirdly I still want to move to New York from Seattle. Would love to see a video on why people are still moving to New York despite all these issues!

One might argue that the rats are only one of the infestations plaguing NYC.

So glad I left NYC. Even 20+ years ago when I lived and worked there, rats were a problem. I too witnessed a giant rat carrying a huge slice down the subway stairs. Running around in restaurants during dinner? Yep. Ugh, just thinking about it is disturbing!

Watching RU-vid on RU-vid is such a new unique experience for me. Thank you sir for letting us watch your phone on our own phones. 😅

Mayor Adams was making a speech on the immigrant crisis and a rat crawled down the wall and across part of the floor behind him.

Bed bugs can crawl over walls (and very fast, too!), so a ledge isn't going to stop them. You're not likely to find them in kitchens or living rooms either, they prefer mattresses, night stands, peeled off wallpaper, books, magazines . . . anything close to their food source, the human body. Glue traps help, but you'll never catch all of the critters. One survivor will live for months without food and produce hundreds of eggs. In some places the things have gotten resistant to insect sprays, plus you have to be very careful if you have a cat, as some pesticides will damage your pet's nervous system. 🙄

7:41 I thought someone was talking from under the couch 🤣

Where does this guy gets his thumbnail photos? They are always stellar. 😅 content is great too !

In my city in England, they decided a few years ago to start using wheelie bins. Certainly, in my area, the rat population plummeted. Obviously, there will still be rats. However, from seeing them daily, I actually can't remember the last time that I saw a rat. Containing the rubbish in lidded bins does work, but only if every property has to use them. There are parts of my city where black sacks are dumped alongside bins, where fly-tipping occurs, these are the areas where rats are visible and a problem. These are also often the areas where there is a lot of graffiti, and this is part of the problem. Excess graffiti suggests that the area is not cared for. An area that looks uncared for means that people take less interest in the environment. Litter therefore increases. The litter attracts rats. The more run down an area looks, the less people care for it. Dealing with the rat problem is not solely the job of local government. However much money is thrown at the problem, if the locals don't play their part, then the money may as well just be poured down the drain.

This reminds me of what it was like in England during the plagues many years ago. Scary to be honest.

"I don't think rats can pick locks." This is the Big Apple...I wouldn't be surprised.

Bedbugs, as a Californian, are such a problem here that if I can't steam or hermetically seal things I throw them out. Terrified of transporting them to my dad's in NC.

I just visited NYC and it was soooo crazy to me to see garbage bags just sitting on the street. Where I’m from, we have to put our garbage in containers. Apartment buildings with 100+ apartments do this and it’s fine.

"I may be a rat.. but I ain't no snitch" -NYC rat

I read the title and immediately thought you were talking about people 😂😂

Rats everywhere along with thousands of new tenant's... It's looking bad for NYC..

The “stop oil” painting at graffiti sign thing at 7:48 INFRONT of all the trash encapsulates the thinking of people in New York pretty well lmfao

I have heard that because rats in cities like New York city have access to so much, some rats have become alcoholics . They actively seek out beer to drink . Not to mention the fact that rats in certain parts also seek out certain foods because they always have access to certain foods they develop a craving for certain foods . Like .. duh ... pizza !! Rats are getting super fat off of pizza !! So yes , rats have developed a taste for certain things and it will only get worse if everyone that lives in those cities do not consciously prevent them from taking over .

The problem with living above the seventh floor is that no fire truck ladder can reach you in case of a fire.

That’s great I’m flying to Chicago this week

I owned a business back in the 80's in Perth Western Australia............... At the time part of the ground floor was a Cafe.... which we had no control of. Some of our guests came to us one day to tell us about the RATS running around in the the Cafe which could be seen from the street. Thankfully we were able to get the people out of there and were able to take over the Cafe and make it a part of our business. It took a LOT of work but we did it............ I know what it is like to have these pests/vermin in your life!!

Istanbul has cats literally everywhere. People take care of them, stop their cars for them, look for their health, feed them, welcome them to chill whereever they like. No rats, very few pidgeons. Of course also a good idea to take care of the trash...

Watching this is really eye opening, because a lot of the things being treated as new innovative solutions to the pest problems, are considered standard procedure and have been around for at least a decade now in the Netherlands where I'm from. The same applies for a lot of western european countries. Weird, how a country that claims to be the best country in the world has issues that lots of other places have found solutions for ages ago.

In Bogotá Colombia we have trash and food leftovers all over the city but the fact we don't have subway system and the apartment buildings pay for private trash management there's no infestation yet you see them every once in a while

Your content has changed and in my opinion for the better. Thanks for mixing it up ! Oh just so you know the containers they are going to start using are very easy for rats to chew through. The lids do not lock and they are flimsy and even the ones you showed had already been chewed throughed. Most likely buildings with over 9 apartments already have stricker rule. They just are not followed.

Back in the 1960s and early seventies the trash was picked up in front of your house three times a week. Starting in the late seventies the sanitation decided to cut back and pick up the garbage twice a week if the garbage was picked up three times a week that would definitely help

I'm from Brazil and i'm not sure why, but it's very interesting to see these videos about NYC. And as far as I know the problems with rats it is a very old problem of the city.

Luckily my old building in Brooklyn didn’t have issues with rats, at least on my floor. I left NYC in 2020 for CA. Within a month my new house had colonies of ants and after my neighbor started their landscaping we were fighting mice in the house and gophers in the backyard. All became under control. I flew back to NYC this past September and came across these spotted lantern flies at the Howard Beach station (JFK). One landed on my luggage. Then I noticed they were everywhere, crushed on the platform, flying into the subway car and people stomping on them. I made sure not bring them back to CA.

Okay, so New York and the outer parts did not already have a standardized container for trash? That one caught me by surprise, pretty much every garbage truck here in the mid west is using standard containers and the side arm to dump trash into the truck.

Makes me glad that I’m living in a small town in Colorado. Nice and clean. We do have field mice but owls and hawks keep them under control.

Indeed saw them after that hurricane 2012 in NYc... in the subway stations...🤣🧐🤯

"Par for the course"!😂

I lived in a low income housing building that got infested with bedbugs (this was before COVID), but was so afraid to say anything to the management because of the wording of our lease made it seem like if we couldn't prove we didn't bring them in somehow (they came from an apartment above ours on a sock that dropped on the windowsill during the height of summer, so our windows were open) and that we could be financially liable for exterminators and other costs we couldn't afford. So we lived with them for over a year, to the point that both my partner and I got cellulitis from it. Thankfully we were able to treat enough of our belongings for a move and put everything else in a very secure storage unit (we made sure of seals and everything so we weren't causing an infestation for anyone else), then left our stuff to starve them out. We've since gotten our stuff back and found it worked, but we lost all our bed and furniture that had been in my family for a few generations.

We got bed bugs from a U-HAUL (rural). Watch out!! It took us a year to get them out of our house. What worked was steaming and diatamacias earth. I sealed off my bedroom for a year (with all out stuff left in there) and they died. It was a great time sleeping on the floor in my living room all that time.

Cities in the Netherlands have underground garbage collection. That reduced the rat and mouse population significant and it is almost no problem anymore

I think they can start with disallowing(like literal law or something) putting trash outside(like in our village and malls), and more frequent garbage truck collection visits as much as they can. In my village it was not allowed to put garbage outside, even on trash day, no one was allowed to put trash outside until the truck arrives, when the truck arrives someone with a megaphone yells around the garbage collector is here, then everyone goes to a block away where a designated pick up spot where trash are placed, instead of the garbage collector going near to every nook and cranny home.

If some of us move to Mars, what are the odds that the rats and the bugs will eventually follow? I would say close to 100%. Anyone disagrees?

You don't defeat rats and bed bugs, you just expand City Hall and created more elected positions....

The container bins for businesses aren’t in place as yet over 4 months after this video , I witnessed a subway takeaway food restaurant take there garbage bags to the street in the evening to sit out all night until the bin truck comes early morning . This was down in manhattan financial district near Wall Street

I visited NY once as the sun was setting glowing eyes began glowing ! I will never go back ! Bed bugs another story all together the are usually in wetter environments. good luck hope you aren't allergic.

15 minutes about bugs but not one mention of how this $5500/mo apartment is like 8 feet wide

CASH has become the best correspondent on the net. He puts talking heads to shame, even shows you how lame they are by comparison, and without beating them up like he does Dunkin and Chipotle. I think he will change how news is reported nationwide.

The thumbnail with the rats sitting around with the humans in the background is hilarious 😂.

We're the rats. The rodents are the clean ones.

It really does have an "Infestation Problem" and they even have rats and roaches to deal with as well.

Omg ... too funny! We New Yorkers are so use to adapting to whatever thing is happening at the moment. For the first time in 40 years I've had mice in my midtown east apartment! This was a perfect "reveal" video! PS ... I haven’t been to a movie house since they found bed bugs in the last city wide invasion. Yeah ... enjoy a night at the movies with popcorn, as the bed bugs crawl into your coat from the seat and you bring them home!! Eeek!!

10:16 "No gaps in the tile." :D

A rat tried to run up my leg in Bushwick a couple years ago. I'm not afraid of rats, but I don't want a stray one running around on my feet!

Wow..such an accurate video....working on 46th street and 6th Ave and I've seen rats during the day dipping and darting..very disturbing. Since COVID when the rats generated unchecked, over 4 million and I believe that number is underestimated, we've been with this problem ever since. Don't know if we'll get control of it given the terrible way we just leave food all over for them. We've had rat problems before, but this infestation is beyond measure and given the city officials and the careless New Yorkers, we've got a massive issue that we have not properly addressed.

I live in Abington, PA. Its right outside of Philadelphia. They have been using the bins that are used for the mechanical trucks that have "arms" that lift the bins and dump them in the truck. It really keeps the town clean.

I was sitting on a bench in Central Park a couple years ago in the middle of the day and watched rats going in and out of holes in the grass close to where people were laying. I imagine its much worse at night.

Minnesota has a Boxelder bug problem. Showed up a a decade ago and exploded. Also, Asian beetle ladybug has become a problem too.

I think it was on the D train. I heard a man scream. I looked over and he was face to face with a rat who had crawled up on him as he dosed waiting for his stop. The rat seemed unconcerned.

So why does Cash keep his family living in all of this filth, grafiti and trash???

That is so cool!

Manhattan isn't the only place in NY state. I was born and raised my entire life in NY, and in all the houses and apartments I've lived in, there was always an infestation. Most of the case for my family and I were the mice. I still live in NY, and even though I recently moved, I still see infestation of roaches, spiders, ants, flies, and especially the most known, rats. 🤢

been watching you for sometimes now I love your production quality and camera work keep it up

I live downtown Paris, France and we face the same issue with rats all other the place. This started 3 years ago, I have never experienced that before for the last 25 years.

It’s really sad that it took NYC this long for plastic trash and recycle bins for each home. We’ve had them in Wisconsin since I was a kid in the 1990’s when they replaced non standard metal trash bins for the plastic ones that everyone now has at their homes (minus the big dumpsters for businesses and apartments).

My man taking a whole as donut, and another a pizza slice xD

Another interesting report about NYC. Thanks Cash.

Forgot to mention that they once carried Bubonic Plage. I grew up in Boston in the 50's and Rats then were the size of cats. There used to be a commercial with a child calling "Here Kitty Kitty" then pans to a huge rat eating under a kitchen chair. I don't remember what it was for but I do remember the size,... Wharf rats

My HOA makes me put my garbage in containers already. How is it not already like that?

There's no substitute for *community* - for people actually taking some sort of pride in where they live and feeling some sort of connection with the people around them.

Cash I love when you do news stories ❤

You are an amazing journalist Cash! I live in the blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and in most communities we have volunteer clean ups every six months! It takes a village to clean up any area where you all live! I also recommend using peppermint, or lemon balm, or cinnamon, and many other herbs to combat any bugs and rats, mice, and other pests!

I couldn't finish this program. I had to take a shower after I saw this.

In the small town I live in it’s almost $1000 to get rid of bedbugs. So most renters just carry them from house to house even if the landlord gets rid of them. So frustrating. And I’m speaking as a landlord 😕

A place like NYC requires insane amount of upkeep and maintenance. During its booming period, it had the support of maintenance, but once the hype is gone, it deteriorates pretty quick.