Residents of Lake View Apartments, a four-building, 400-unit Rental Complex Across The StreetFrom Central Park On East 106th Street and Fifth Avenue, are being held hostage by furry foes. The rat population at the building, just a block from the end of Museum Mile, is out of control, DNAinfo reported.
“I have to steel myself up to walk through the middle of the complex. If I see them I’ll start hyperventilating. I can’t breathe and I’m deathly afraid,” Angela Donadelle, who has lived at the building since it opened in 1976, told DNAinfo.
State Senator Bill Perkins, who has also targeted rats in the subway, wrote to the city’s Department of Health and asked them to help out, saying the condition poses a health and safety hazard.
The health department has issued several violations to the building’s owners since February, a spokeswoman from the agency told DNAinfo. The DOH conducted multiple exterminations following February and March inspections, and issued the owner an order to abate the property after finding active burrows and rat droppings during a follow-up inspection on June 5.
An inspection to determine owner compliance is scheduled for this week.
Ron Dawley, CEO of Dalton Management, which manages the complex, told DNAinfo that they are taking steps to address the problem. He pointed to excessive garbage as a cause for the infestation. [DNAinfo] —Julie Strickland