Rats, Here Come the Bureaucrats

If you're wondering why the Department of Health inspectors were neglecting the rat problem in the city's restaurants, it's probably because most of them were far too busy inspecting me.

For the past three years I've been harassed by these inspectors as if I were a slum landlord endangering the lives of my grandchildren. Meanwhile, a mother who had her newborn sleep in her bed because of rat infestation in her Bronx apartment accidentally smothered the baby.

When a local news show photographed the rats foraging openly in a Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell franchise, the department swept into action, shutting it down, along with several other fast-food restaurants across the city. It seemed as if the health department actually took a sudden interest in protecting the health of residents instead of following senseless bureaucratic protocol.

When the Bloomberg administration enacted the city's Lead Paint Hazard Reduction Law in June 2004, I fell into that bureaucratic protocol web. By October of that year, I ended up in an emergency room with severe chest pains.

Imagine hordes of inspectors demanding access to your home so they can check if you have peeling lead-paint chips, and you might end up there as well.

I live in a house that is more than 100 years old. I have raised my six children in it and never had any lead-poisoning problems. In 2003, we renovated a kitchen, and my two young grandsons, who live upstairs, became exposed to the dust that raised their lead levels above the accepted norms. As required by law, the pediatricians reported the abnormal lab results to the Department of Health. Common sense would have warranted monitoring these levels until they were brought under control. This was not even considered. The children were given iron supplements, and soon their levels were normal. They are healthy, bright, and above average in all criteria, but that made little difference to these inspectors, who said that once I was in the system they had to follow rules set up to monitor landlords.

I am not a landlord, I insisted. My daughter lives rent free with her family in the house in which she grew up.

Makes no difference, I was told. After refusing to give them access on several occasions, I relented and let in the inspectors. Big mistake. One inspector, an Eastern European who barely spoke English, wielded a device that supposedly found lead paint on surfaces that never had been painted. Lead paint was found on unpainted stairs and on an area of the ceiling that had been replaced a few years earlier with wallboard and latex paint.

When I complained about the obvious erroneous test results, I was told that the device cost thousands of dollars and never was wrong and that the unpainted stairs must have had contaminated water drip on them. I was then ordered to clear these violations or else.

In the past two years my home has been invaded by inspectors checking up on the corrections of these so-called violations. I've had to pay for dust swipes and lab analyses of these swipes. I attended a health department hearing after I was threatened with a $2,000 lien on my home if I failed to show up. There I had to pay a minimum $200 fine even though the judge agreed the entire case was ridiculous.

The Health Violations room at 16 Jones St. was filled with more than 500 people answering summons for various offenses. The actual slum landlords could be spotted with their attorneys, and they appeared to be at ease with these hearings. Many others appeared to be ordinary citizens who were shocked by having to pay fines for violations they were unaware even existed.

If the health department can close restaurants because of rats, who's in charge of rats in the home? When Gladys Robles smothered her 8-week-old son because her Bronx apartment was infested with rats, her landlord, Christopher Hanover, told a Daily News reporter that he was unaware of the rat problem. But the News reported that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development had cited the building for 378 violations, including 20 for rodent infestation.

Maybe these violations were never forwarded to the health department because its inspectors were overwhelmed dealing with violations against the various nanny ordinances — smoking ban, trans-fat, caloric menu mandates — instituted by the mayor, whom my daughter says reminds her of an anal-retentive hall monitor.

If our health department can return to its original mission of safeguarding our health instead of manipulating our behavior, tragedies like the one in the Bronx might be averted.