Ah, more than 1, my mistake. Thanks for the link.

Beyond that, I think it's 2 separate things, health and property concerns. Property damage I'll definitely give you, and the estimate could be much lower than actual damage, but I'm trying to focus on the health side as most of the time we see anything on here about rats it's framed in matters of health. And my point is that if you look into it the concern is a bit overblown.

Looking into lepto, 2021 shows around 13 [human] cases, 2020 had around 5. Thinking about that in reference to nyc pop of around 8.5 million, that's a 0.000153 and 0.000059 %. These numbers are so low they aren't even rounding errors. Although to be fair, the increase between 20/21 could be a matter of concern.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/han/advisory/2021/leptospirosis-cases-increase.pdf