Pest control company Orkin declares Chicago ‘rattiest’ city again. How do other cities stack up?

The Windy City remains the most rodent-infested American city for yet another year, according to Orkin.

The pest control company dubbed Chicago as such in its yearly “Top 50 Rattiest Cities” rankings released on Monday. The populous Illinois city has also held that place for the past eight years.

To determine the order of the ranking, Orkin looked at new pest control treatments for rodents in a 12-month time frame from September 2022 through August 2023. The company said it “indicates the efforts that residents and businesses of the top cities have taken to treat rodent issues” as well as demand for the services.

In Chicago, residents have often faced Norway rats whose origins actually trace back to Asia, according to a webpage from the city government. Rodents pose a problem for roughly 21 million U.S. homes during a given fall season, Orkin said. 

Los Angeles and New York City flip-flopped this year. For the former, its ranking rose to second place while the latter became third “rattiest,” according to the pest control company.

New York City brought onboard Kathleen Corradi more than six months ago to serve as the city’s director of rodent mitigation. She has been tasked as “rat czar” with “lead[ing] and implement[ing] a unified strategy to reduce rats in neighborhoods across New York’s five boroughs, with a focus on innovative ways to cut off rats’ food sources, as well as through testing and developing new technologies to detect and exterminate rat populations,” according to a press release at the time of her appointment.

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The two others cities that Orkin considered among the five most rat-infested were Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

The three metro areas behind those did not see their spots on the list change year over year. In the No. 6 spot was Philadelphia while Baltimore came in seventh and Denver eighth, according to Orkin.

The pest control company ranked Detroit as the ninth most rat-infested city, marking a one-spot increase for the Michigan city. The Cleveland-Akron area, meanwhile, went to No. 10.

Orkin has belonged to Atlanta-based Rollins Inc. since 1964. In addition to Orkin, Rollins has a slew of other brands such as Western Pest Services and Northwest Exterminating, according to its website.

Rollins had a value of $16.33 billion on a market cap basis as of early Tuesday afternoon.