A recent study confirmed what people have been noticing in San Francisco in recent years: We seem to have more rats than ever before. What is the city doing about it?

Yes, San Francisco has a rat problem, and to some extent we always have. Big cities tend to be prime breeding grounds for rodents, and the more unattended trash we leave around, the more rats have food to feed themselves.

Vox called out a recent study, published in Science Advances, that tracked rat complaints in 16 major cities, and San Francisco was second only to Washington DC in seeing the largest increase in complaints of any of the cities in recent years. Mind you, the study does not provide estimates of actual rat numbers in these cities — which is somewhat impossible to track. But it uses comparable metrics across the cities like numbers of 311 complaints, and inspection data.

And SF has been seeing a lot of complaints.

There have been occasional reports in recent years that San Francisco may be more of a rat breeding ground than ever before. ABC 7 reported in 2022 on a rat problem at a busy playground in San Francisco,  Helen Diller Civic Center Playground near City Hall. We learned of a "birdseed lady" who was causing a rat infestation in the Glen Park area that same year. And ABC 7 subsequently reported last fall on a seeming Bay Area-wide uptick in rat troubles, according to exterminators.

It should be noted that extermination company Orkin did an analysis of how ratty different cities were three years ago, and at that time San Francisco was in fifth place, behind Chicago, LA, New York, and DC.

The Chronicle reports this week that San Francisco has been taking steps to control the rat population, with the Recreation and Parks Department leading the charge on a few fronts. In Portsmouth Square, in Chinatown, a "rat birth control" substance is deployed in those bait boxes, rendering female rats infertile for up to three months. This has had a noticeable impact, the department says, given that rats can give birth seven times a year to litters of up to 12 baby rats.

In Dolores Park, raptor boxes have reportedly been installed, drawing birds that prey on vermin, and this has also apparently brought the rat population down there.

The SF Department of Public Health, of course, inspects the city's restaurants regularly, sometime shutting a restaurant down when there is an infestation, and working with the owners to clean up and secure trash so the rats don't return.

And the Department of Public Works handles the street rat problem, at least when it comes to open trash cans.

But does San Francisco need a "rat czar" like the one New York Mayor Eric Adams famously appointed in 2023? Adams is vocal about his hatred of rats, and he saw mitigating the rat problem in the city as a major quality-of-life issue, as well as an image issue.

The new report putting San Francisco two notches above New York City should probably put Mayor Daniel Lurie on alert.

The Chronicle notes that District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter has made street cleanups one of his first priorities, and he is reportedly spearheading an effort to rethink how trash cans are placed around the city, and how often they're emptied. And, no, we won't be getting those very expensive, high-design trash receptacles that DPW infamously spent upwards of $500,000 getting designed and prototyped. That line item was nixed a year ago, as the current budget crisis was setting in.

Photo: Joshua J. Cotton