They scamper across the washing machine as if they are the ones paying the rent — though they are certainly not named on the lease. First comes a baby, followed by mom and dad.
Rats. Lots of rats. Crawling throughout the public housing apartment in the Bronx, captured on video Friday in a well lit laundry room and kitchen. These are not shy rats.
The vermin invasion has been horrifying Bronx residents of the Claremont Rehab apartments for months. But the infestation appeared to accelerate after NYCHA shut down the basement garbage compactor last Wednesday — driving the rats to the upper floors in search of food.
Veronica Martinez, 42, watched in horror Friday as no fewer than five rats skittered around her apartment and clambered over her washing machine, her kitchen sink and her stove in a desperate search for nourishment.
“We’re living in horrible conditions,” she said at a Monday morning press conference. “I had to get rid of everything — dishes, pots and pans — because of this.”
Her story wasn’t news to tenant Asia Clemente, 32, was terrified in August when she discovered a large rat on top of her 1-year-old son, Daniel, as he was napping on the living room couch. The vermin had sunk its teeth into little Daniel and fled when she entered the room.
Moments later, Clemente’s 9-year-old daughter, also named Asia, screamed from her bedroom about another rat.
Her son, who was born prematurely and suffers with breathing issues, had to take antibiotics for two weeks, she said. Daniel is rarely able to leave the apartment because of his health problems, Clemente added.
“He lives inside this apartment with the rats,” the disgusted mom said. “We hear them at night in the walls.”
The Daily News documented a prior rat invasion at Claremont several years ago. On Monday, Daniel Barber, chairman of the Citywide Council of Presidents, a NYCHA tenant leader group, said the whole building at 1150 College Ave. is infested with rodents to a degree he’s never witnessed before. The infestation is so bad Con Edison workers won’t enter the basement.
“Con Edison is estimating the bills because they cannot get down to the basement to read the meters,” he said.
On Monday, tenant Krushaun Person, 37, was forced to store his food in a plastic cooler because rats had chewed on the wires in his refrigerator and it no longer functioned. Over the weekend he walked into his living room to discover an enormous rat sitting on his couch. The creature jumped behind the couch, and with the help of NYCHA workers at the site — trying to deal with vermin elsewhere in the building — he chased the rat into the hall.
“They beat the rat with a rake,” he said, displaying a photo of the expired rodent that looked to be about the size of a small cat.
In fact, even the cats are suffering. A 24-year-old tenant named Sue said her cat runs and hides when the rats show up. “The cat is scared,” she said, describing an incident Friday in which a rat ran across her foot last week as she was changing the diaper of her 8-month-old son.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “They are ruthless. You kick them, they don’t run.”
NYCHA’s inability to tackle its rat problem was one of a long list of failures highlighted by federal prosecutors in an 80-page complaint filed in June as part of a consent decree in which NYCHA has agreed to the appointment of a federal monitor.
And in April Mayor de Blasio announced a new aggressive effort to reduce rat infestations at 10 NYCHA developments. Claremont Rehab was not on that list.
NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said workers have been at Claremont all weekend addressing the rat situation in multiple apartments, plastering over holes in walls and foundations.
The staff will begin cleaning out the basement and plugging holes there Tuesday and then will perform top-to-bottom inspects of the Claremont buildings at 1150, 1152, 1154 and 1156 College Ave.
“Our residents should not have to live in these conditions,” Blake said.
“Since this first came to our attention, we have taken aggressive steps to address the current infestation by eliminating rodent access to the building and the apartments, which will also keep future rodents away. We apologize to our residents and will continue to vigilantly monitor this situation,” she added.
The building is part of a string of tenements NYCHA renovated and took over in 1987. This year the housing authority fixed up a commercial space in the complex to rent out.
But as of Monday, it had yet to open because of the unwanted four-legged tenants that have taken over.
