Cities are bursting with life—too much of it, sometimes. Just ask James Vahter, a video producer who set up shop a few years ago in a trendy part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He got a sweet deal on a spacious, two-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up, but it didn’t take him long to understand why the rent was so cheap. It happened a few weeks into his stay, when he returned from a business trip in the middle of the night and flipped on the hallway light.
“My walls were crawling,” he recalls. “From the floorboards to the ceiling, cockroaches were everywhere. I ran to the kitchen to grab some Raid—and the counters were crawling too.”
Welcome to the epic battle between city dweller and vermin. In Vahter’s case, he was able to wriggle (sorry) out of his lease and retreat to the suburbs. But not all urbanites are lucky enough to have the option of a happy ending.
From water bug traumas to Pizza Rat videos, pests are a terrifyingly common part of American life. In 2015, about 11% of U.S. households had encounters with rats or mice, and 12% with cockroaches, according to the Census Bureau’s newly released American Housing Survey. And, of course, those numbers increase exponentially in high-density metro areas.
Vermin nation
Some creepy creature populations are very much on the rise. There has been a 7% increase in complaints about rats in New York from 2015 to 2016, and a 16% uptick in Boston. Not squirming yet? A recent report by the pest-control company Orkin found a steep rise in bedbug incidents nationwide, to near-epidemic levels in many cities.
“We have more people affected by bedbugs in the United States now than ever before,” said Ron Harrison, an entomologist and director of technical services at Orkin, in the report. “They were virtually unheard of in the U.S. 10 years ago.”
Antwinette Clurksy, 64, endured living with bedbugs in her one-bedroom Houston apartment for more than three years. They were under the carpets, on the mattress—everywhere.
“I would be sitting on the couch, and I look up, and they’re crawling on me,” Clurksy says. She had red bite marks all over her body. Eventually, she had to sleep on the floor after throwing away her mattress, along with the sofa and dining table, because of the infestation.
Despite this and other horror stories, not all cities are equally affected by the onslaught of pests. In Seattle, for example, less than 1% of homes have a roach problem.
To figure out which cities are most under siege by critters with four or more legs, we used the rat and cockroach data from the American Housing Survey, as well as data about mosquitoes, termites, bedbugs, fleas/ticks—and, hey, scorpions, too—collected from other sources.*
What makes some cities more attractive to pests than others? The Northeast has an infamous rat problem—the chilly winter months drive the multitude of rodents in search of shelter, warmth and food. And the South is plagued by insects. Big insects.
“The warmer climate in the Southern states increases the ability to support insects for longer periods of time,” says Michael Raupp, an entomologist from the University of Maryland. “Insects are usually killed by the coldness, but since it rarely reaches lethal temperatures [freezing point] in the South, cockroaches and bedbugs remain active for a longer time out of the year.”
So where does your city rank on this ignominious list? We doused our data team with copious amounts of Off and turned them loose to find out. Let’s get crawling!
1. Houston, TX
Houston gets a big tentacles- and claws-up from several species of pests, including cockroaches, rats, mosquitoes, bedbugs, and termites. It’s the pest capital of the United States! Why? The warm, humid climate and huge human population (people=trash=delicious food!) offer a luxury spa for vermin, according to Steve Durham, president of pest control company EnviroCon in Houston. About two in five households reported seeing cockroaches, making it the second-worst city for the ubiquitous bugs after New Orleans, according to the American Housing Survey.
“In Houston, I have seen multiple times when there were thousands and thousands of roaches,” Durham says. “You can’t believe how some people just don’t clean [their homes]. Roaches multiply very fast—every roach egg has 32 babies, and those 32 babies will each have 32 babies.” Yuck.
2. New York, NY
No one knows how many rats live in New York, but estimates range all the way from 2 million to 28 million—and that high estimate would mean that there are almost four rats for each human in the most populous city in the nation. The city that never sleeps! Traps have been set, poisons brewed, and volunteers have relocated stray cats to rat-infested areas, according to the New York Daily News, but rats seem to be winning this war. How about we just give them Staten Island and call it even?
“In New York, a lot of architecture was designed without pest control in mind,” explains Taylor Falk, environmental analyst from M&M Environmental. The alleyways, dumpsters, and garbage are very close together. … When there is food and areas to move around, there are rats.”
Mice and rats are talented climbers, Falk says, and sometimes even climb high-rises through the utility systems (like hot water pipes).
And just like in the city’s alleys, rats and cockroaches battle for dominance overall. Rats were found in 15% of homes, cockroaches in 16%.
3. Washington, DC
The District of Columbia is ranked the second-worst city for bedbugs by Orkin, while nearby Baltimore took the top spot. Blame the area’s huge influx of international travelers. Diplomats, tourists, and businesspeople (and their baggage) are practically VIP shuttle services for bedbugs, says Raupp, of the University of Maryland. Washington’s mild climate also helps bedbugs survive.
“The problem is that many of the materials we used to treat bedbugs are no longer available, due to EPA regulations. So there has been a large insurgence,” says Dannis Warf from Royal Pest Control. “They aren’t just in homes, but also in movie theaters, public transportation, libraries, even hospitals.” The pests even invaded the DC Department of Health in 2012.
And although Washington is often criticized for its “fat cats,” rats are a major problem. In fact, there’s even a Yelp page dedicated to a well-known park, satirically labeled as “Dupont Circle Rat Sanctuary.” One review reads, “Wonderful place for 100% organic, free-range rats to frolic in a safe environment without predators.”
4. Atlanta, GA
Warm climate? Check. Wet summers? Check. Swamps and forested areas? Check. Perhaps nowhere can mosquitoes find a better breeding ground than Atlanta. There are about 45 kinds of mosquito living in the Southern city, according to Elmer Gray, a professor of entomology at the University of Georgia. And some species can carry West Nile and Zika viruses. Last summer, there were 77 cases of Zika in Georgia, according to Georgia Health News.
5. Philadelphia, PA
A total of 18% of Philly households have seen rats, making Philadelphia the rattiest city in America. The city’s huge swath of old row houses make it easier for the nimble animals to find holes in the walls and move, Habitrail-like, from one family to another.
“Philadelphia also has a very unseasonably warm winter this year, so the rats are growing more than usual,” says Royal Pest Control’s Warf.
6. Miami, FL
We love Miami’s year-around steamy weather. Unfortunately, so do cockroaches, mosquitoes, and termites. Florida has six invasive termite species that swarm alternately throughout the year, feasting on anything made of wood. By 2040, half of the structures in South Florida will be at risk of termite infestation, according to a study by the University of Florida.
“It’s hot, it’s humid, it rains a lot, and we have a lot of wooden-structure homes, as opposed to concrete-structure homes,” says JC Riverol from Spray’em Dead Termite & Pest in Miami.
The average cost to homeowners to repair termite damage is $3,000, but that can vary widely, depending on the extent of the damage, according to Termites.com.
7. Tampa, FL
The good news about Tampa is that it’s practically rodent-free; the bad news is, cockroaches won’t leave you alone. Ever. They are present in an alarming 38% of homes. They flock to Tampa like retirees, and get comfy in the kitchen, under the palm trees, and inside the gazebos.
Pet owners in Tampa also need to keep an eye out for fleas and ticks, which love the warm temperature and year-round humidity. These tiny insects usually don’t mess with humans, but they cling to the skins of dogs and cats, transmitting diseases like Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and tapeworms.
8. Nashville, TN
With plenty of old structures to roam through, the Music City offers rats a comfortable habitat. Winter’s low temperatures of 30 degrees send rats scurrying into people’s homes for warmth and food, and the humid summer provides perfect conditions for breeding. Brown rats are the most common in Tennessee. One of the largest rat species, they can grow to an incredible 15 inches or more in length. (Silent scream!) Each year, there are also 50 snakebites reported in Tennessee, according to the Vanderbilt Medical Centers.
9. Phoenix, AZ
Phoenix residents have something scarier than garden-variety roaches to contend with: scorpions. Native to the arid Arizona desert, the bark scorpion is the most venomous scorpion in the United States, and is the culprit in most scorpion bites in the state. Arizona’s two poison-control centers report about 12,000 scorpion stings in the state each year.
Most scorpion stings go away after a few hours, unless you have a serious allergy—in which case you need to head to an ER, pronto. Better bring the American Express, too. In 2012, Marcie Edmonds was stung by a scorpion and billed $83,000 for anti-venom, the local CBS news station reported.
“The valley was the natural habitat for scorpions. Then humans came in and destroyed their habitats, to build concrete walls and buildings. But scorpions like concrete walls,” says Ben Holland of Scorpion Sweepers, a pest control company. “So we destroyed their habitat and built something even better.”
10. Boston, MA
In 1917, the Boston Women’s Municipal League spearheaded a sweeping extermination campaign against the city’s proliferating rats, leading up to the first (and, to date,only) Rat Day, when residents were offered prizes for the largest number of rat carcasses turned in. A century later, the city is still battling rodents. The long, cold winter of New England forces ’em to creep into people’s homes for warmth and food. Last year, the Boston Inspectional Services Department received more than 3,500 rodent complaints.
The city adopted a rather innovative measure: dropping dry ice into rat burrows so that rats will suffocate. The method was proven to be effective, although it was temporarily stopped by the EPA last December because dry ice wasn’t registered as a pesticide, according to a report by the local CBS station.
* Data sources: American Housing Survey, Orkin, Terminix, Eastern Arizona Courier, Hartz
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