One of our current Mayor's most salient achievements during his tenure in DC was the significant reduction in the city wide crime rate. Congratulations!!!. DC is now a city with lower crime rates that should translate in increasing levels of quality of life, prosperity, and all of the direct and indirect benefits that come with lower levels of crime. However, I guess if we look at the statistics in detail and by neighborhood--something that I have done by the way-- not all neighborhoods have had reductions in their levels of crime but that's meat for another blog....
But there is something that scares me more than crime and that is RATS!!. In the past few months I have witnessed a substantial increase in the population of rodents in my neighborhood. I can't really attest if this is true in other parts of DC but wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.
Crime has gone down in the city but the rat population is only increasing. People may be wondering: what the hell is this guy talking about? Crime goes down and rats go up?!?!?! It is obviously a spurious correlation. Maybe is the other way around, rats have multiplied and have scared criminals away... bringing the overall crime rate down...not really, though!. Then, what is the apparent relationship that rats in crime have? it is a simple one and with the same potentially negative effects!: property values. Just as crime has detrimental effects on property values, so would rats. The existing literature of the negative impacts of crime on property values is extensive. Methodologies to calculate the costs of crime on property values vary and so do the end results -- studies show that the impact can range from US$ 2,000 to US$ 8,000 or more--. But all studies agree on one thing: Crime has negative effects on housing prices.
Studies on the economic impact of rats on property values do not exist, at least to my knowledge, so I cannot offer you any hard evidence of it. Moreover, given the way house prices have skyrocketed in Washington in the past 10 years you probably will tell me that my argument won't hold. However, I have found some websites that show how much your house would lose by having these apparently harmless animals. For example, the website (www.allstateanimalcontrol.com) claims that rats in your house will result in a 5 to 10% average loss. This is a significant loss of value of your property!!!!
Notwithstanding their potential impact on property values, rats should not be able to multiply in my neighborhood or anywhere else in the city for that matter.
There are excellent models of pest-free policies to follow. Look for example at the province of Alberta in Canada. It is the only province in the country that has been rat-free for more than 50 years thanks to aggressive-- and at the same time progressive-- government policies on rodent clean up. This can be done just as crime can be reduced! However, I am still not seeing any action by my ward representatives or the municipal government, at least not in my neighborhood!
