New York City may be less of a minefield for the soles of your shoes than it was six years ago.
The number of complaints made to 311 about canine waste in the Big Apple dropped about 25 percent over five years, from nearly 3,500 calls in 2010 to 2,600 in 2015, according to a new study by the apartment rental listings website RentHop.
That means that either city dog owners have gotten better at cleaning up after their pooches, or New Yorkers have stopped caring as much about sidestepping landmines on their sidewalks.
All five boroughs saw a decrease in the number of 311 complaints during the five-year period, which Rent Hop accessed through the NYC Open Data portal. Brooklyn led the pack with 31.8 percent fewer complaints in 2015 — 712 — than 2010, when it had 1,044 complaints. The number of complaints about dog poop on Staten Island and Queens sidewalks both declined more than 23 percent. Manhattan saw 15.3 percent fewer complaints in 2015 compared to the number in 2010, and the Bronx saw a 17.8 percent drop in complaints.
The Bronx would appear to continue to have either the worst canine offenders or the most vociferous residents, with the greatest number of complaints per square mile among the boroughs in 2015, 16.87, and the lowest percentage of the city's registered dogs, at 10 percent. There are 84,045 dogs registered with the city's Department of Health, but the agency estimates that they make up only 20 percent of the city's total canine population.
In 2014, Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz told DNAinfo New York that his office was focused on the issue of enforcing a 1978 city law requiring dog owners to pick up after their pups or incur a $250 fine.
“We have urged the Department of Sanitation to increase enforcement in The Bronx, and it’s clear that those efforts are making an impact," he said at the time.
Harding Park in the Bronx did see a decrease of 88 percent in dog poop complaints in the first half of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015. Other New York City neighborhoods with significant decreases in complains include: Whitestone, Queens, with 91 percent fewer calls; Emerson Hill, Staten Island: Chelsea and Union Square in Manhattan; and Carroll Gardens and Red Hook in Brooklyn.
Complaints in West Concourse in the Bronx trended in the opposite direction, their numbers increasing by 900 percent in the first half of 2016 compared to the first six months of the previous year.
The RentHop map below compares the number of poop complaints in each city neighborhood from January through June 2015 to January through June of 2016:
As for what time of year the city receives the greatest number of complaints about dog feces, it turns out it's not during the summer months, when owners are most inclined to take their hounds on long walks. Most years between 2010 and 2016 saw a spike in complaints in February and March, when, as the RentHop study put it, snow melts and "the poops that have been frozen and hiding begin to become visible again."
