Chicago Remains 'Rat Capital' Of America: Study

CHICAGO, IL — Chicago still holds the title for "rat capital" of the U.S., according to RentHop, the online business helping renters find apartments by ranking them based on data analysis of several factors, including freshness. RentHop said it looked at rodent complains made to the city's 311 in an effort to find which cities and neighborhoods within each city had the most complaints. According to the study, 40,057 rodent complaints were filed in Chicago during 2018.

The abundance of garbage and buildings in Chicago makes it a great location for rats to seek shelter and food for survival, RentHop reported.

While the city as a whole received 21 percent fewer rodent complains than in 2017, a number of downtown neighborhoods can't say the same.

According to RentHop, rodent complaints spiked increased 13 percent in Little Village, from 1,094 unique rodent complaints in 2017 to 1,239 in 2018.

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Some more key findings:

• The city has received 21,991 rat complaints from January to July 2019, a 7 percent increase compared to the same period in 2018.
• While some neighborhoods saw a spike in rodent complaints, there are neighborhoods who saw a big decrease in complaints.
• In 2017, Chicago 311 received a total of 50,963 complaints (2.6 times more than what New York City received), or 1876.1 complaints per 100,000 residents.

Related:

• All Hail The Rat King! Chicago Named Rattiest City For 3rd Year
• Chicago Is Most Rat-Infested US City Until Further Notice

Click on the interactive map below to learn more about each neighborhood. According to RentHop, the map indicates the concentration of rodent complaints in Chicago. (Neighborhoods in darker shades have a higher concentration of rodent complaints). RentHop said it's very possible that larger neighborhoods receive more complaints than smaller neighborhoods, so the number of rodent complaints are normalized by land size:

In 2018, Chicago was also named the most rat-infested U.S. city by Orkin, which released its list of the top 50 rodent havens in the nation in October. The Atlanta-based pest control company determined its ranking by the amount of residential and commercial rat and mice treatments it performed between Sept. 15, 2017, and Sept. 15, 2018.

Orkin started its most rat-infested list in 2014, and Chicago has held the top spot every year except 2015, the only year no list was compiled.

More: renthop.com updated study