Troubleshooting

The Dog Poop Files: NYC nabes with the most canine complaints

By Jennifer Laing  | August 19, 2014 - 12:59PM
image

Despite the fact that apartments are small, dogs are often left home alone for hours on end, and most toileting requires exercise on the owner’s part as well as the pooch’s, New York City is a veritable haven for dogs (just check out your local dog run before and/or after work for proof). That said, some neighborhoods are better at controlling canine nuisances (barking, howling, poop left on sidewalks) than others, according to the folks at Gothamist, who whipped up a nifty interactive map that breaks down incidents of noise and waste complaints made to 311 by zip code.

Residents of Lower Manhattan, Midtown and the Upper East Side logged the fewest complaints. Tribeca, for example, had just 29 total: 23 for noise and 6 for waste (aka poop).

Meanwhile, large areas of Staten Island, Bay Ridge and Ridgewood in Queens had the highest, with those living in Staten Island’s 10314 zip cataloging the most (369 noise complaints and 134 waste complaints).

Family-friendly ’hoods—where you might expect to see a plethora of pups—fell somewhere in the middle. Park Slope’s 11215, for example, had 348 total complaints (288 for noise and 60 for waste) and in 10024 on the Upper West Side there were 195 (153 for noise and 42 for waste).

While it’s difficult to determine if the low complaint areas were due to a dearth of dogs or a glut of vigilant owners, you may want to heed the following advice: If you’re not a dog person, apartment search in the low incident green zones. If you are a dog person (or plan to become one) decide how fastidious an owner you are or plan to be, then choose a neighborhood accordingly.

Related:

5 great NYC nabes...for dogs

Big dogs are not always a big problem in NYC--here's how to look (and where)

How to get your dog past a co-op board

About that barking dog in your building...

Brick Underground articles occasionally include the expertise of, or information about, advertising partners when relevant to the story. We will never promote an advertiser's product without making the relationship clear to our readers.

topics: