By Lucy Hooker
Business reporter in New York.
The image is from the same source.
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New York City will face a plague of rats in 2021.
A group of rats scurried across her feet as she sat outside a restaurant in New York's fashionable Greenwich Village.
She says that within seconds everybody jumped up.
She says that everyone in New York has a similar story to tell. "We have an explosion of rats."
"You can see them when you come out at night," says Deborah Gonzalez, who lives in Manhattan's Lower East Side. "You can see them running back and forth when you walk on this block."
It's difficult to say how many calls have been to New York City's complaints hotline mentioning rodents this year, but they've gone up 15%.
"Obviously New York has always had rats, but now they are bigger and bolder, they jump at you," says Marcell Rocha, who also lives in the neighbourhood. They are doing backflips.
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Diem, Marcell and Deborah are objecting to the way restaurants have taken over the streets in their area.
Diem, Deborah and Marcell blamed the new plague on the door of the al fresco dining that has spread through the city during the Pandemic.
Hundreds of New York's streets are now lined with ad hoc shelters, completely altering the urban landscape. There are more than 11,000 new outdoor eating spots.
Some of the new venues are little more than a frame and a scattering of chairs, others are sturdy structures with floors, fairy-lights, flower pots and electric heaters.
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New York's streets are lined with ad hoc shelters.
The shelters encourage a lot of black plastic rubbish bags to accumulate at the roadside and provide a perfect hideout for rats under the floorboards, according to Diem, Deborah and Marcell.
Over the last year and a half, these venues have proven to be very popular with customers. It's too popular for local residents.
Marcell says that this is "hell on earth" because of the crowd and noise. The Lower East Side has always been lively, but last summer it felt like a festival.
New York's mayor launched an "open restaurants" scheme at the start of the epidemic. It was part of a larger vision of a city that was less dominated by traffic and more focused on its residents and visitors. It provided a boost to the industry.
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The outdoor dining craze is causing access issues and increasing litter.
The mayor decided to make outdoor dining a permanent feature after the outbreak of the Pandemic in late 2020 because the initial permission to set up outdoor eating areas was a temporary emergency measure.
Bill de Blasio said that Open Restaurants was a big, bold experiment in supporting a vital industry and rethinking our public space.
We're proud to extend and expand this effort to keep New York City the most vibrant city in the world as we begin a long-term recovery.
The City Council is debating and voting on removing regulations that limit outdoor dining.
Diem, Marcell and Deborah were upset by that move. The impact of the restaurant sheds has not been assessed. More than a dozen other residents have launched legal action to try and force the city to look more closely at the effect a permanent expansion of outdoor eating and socializing will have.
Deborah says that the plan was not to have that happen. She says that when the emergency scheme was launched, residents wanted to support the struggling sector. They feel that their views are being ignored.
Lief Arntzen's image source.
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Some residents want a review of the impact of outdoor dining.
She worries for elderly residents trying to navigate busy pavement because the rats, the crowds, the vomit and the dirt are upsetting.
She says that fire engines have to slow down to pass through streets with restaurant sheds. In May, the New York City Fire Department said that the sheds had delayed them from arriving to the scene of a fire at a Chinese restaurant in central Manhattan.
The impact of outdoor dining is being called for a review by residents from Chinatown to Queens.
It is altering the character of neighbourhoods that weren't previously dominated by noisy nightlife, in other areas it is making existing problems worse.
The health and safety purpose of providing a well-ventilated dining space has been defeated by the fact that the sheds have been enclosed in sheets of plastic. Some of the sheds that are no longer being used are falling into disrepair and have graffiti on them.
Diem says it's like a shanty town.
Not everyone sees it that way.
Jacob Siwak is the head chef and owner of Italian restaurant, Forsythia, which is just across the road from where Deborah lives.
He says it's insane that people are focusing on the small things when there are so many big positives.
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The scheme offers huge advantages, according to Jacob, head chef and owner of Forsythia.
Mr Siwak thinks his restaurant has increased the value of the block. It allows me to hire more people. I can pay a New York living city wage to a lot of people on my staff.
He points out that there are rules about how far out into the road he's allowed to put the shed. He thinks that concerns about emergency vehicles getting through are not valid.
New York has a problem with refuse collection, but he says dining sheds are not to blame. His restaurant is not making it worse. We use ceramic plates, linen napkins and silverware. He says that they are not accumulating garbage.
Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, believes that making the outdoor dining scheme permanent could be the catalyst the city needs to tackle its refuse problem.
The system for collecting New Yorkers' waste has been disrupted by the Pandemic and the sheds, as most of the rubbish is left on the roadside in black plastic bags.
The system needs improvement, but Mr Rigie says it shouldn't be a problem for outdoor dining.
The reality is that restaurants and the public love outdoor dining. There's a demand to make it permanent.
The current temporary programme isn't being made permanent. A new set of standards and regulations is being hammered out to address many of the residents' concerns.
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The sheds have allowed restaurant and bar owners to keep more people in work.
Are people going to have different opinions on the street? Absolutely. New York City is a big place with many different uses for the public space.
The City says the new programme's key principles will be accessibility, appearance, and safety, allowing all neighbourhoods to take part, and ensuring restaurant set-ups work in their neighbourhood context and safety.
The Department of Transport and the Department of Planning are asking New Yorkers how they think the aims can be achieved.
Hank Gutman, the department of transport commissioner, says that the success of outdoor dining shows how we can improve our neighbourhoods.
Mr Gutman says he will consult with the public to craft guidelines that will increase accessibility, safety and address concerns such as noise, hours of operation and Sanitation.
Many residents remain unconvinced. The consultation will not reach many parts of the community, especially those that aren't online. They think the scheme has been poorly policed and that will be a problem for a permanent one.
They're suspicious of the forces behind the scheme even if stricter conditions are agreed and enforced.
Diem says this is no longer about recovery. Landlords are being gifted one of the biggest public landgrabs in New York City's history because of the free use of restaurants on the street.
She argues that they can push up rents and favour bars and restaurants over other small businesses as a result of that.
Diem says that the argument is that it is a public safety health hazard. This is for developers and landlords to make a lot of money.
Public health problems.
New York City.
Rats.
The industry of hotels.
There are restaurants.
The United States.
