These NYC neighborhoods have the most bedbug violations

Brace yourselves!

Depending on how you see it, Localize.city's latest report is your worst fear actualized or the list that you've been dying to read the most. This new report enumerates NYC's neighborhoods with the worst bedbug problems, so you might want to brace yourselves before you get any further into this.

First, the good news: bedbug violations fell 28 percent across the city over the last five years. This is largely because of new policies implemented by the city. In 2010, the city passed the Bedbug Disclosure Act. This law requires landlords to notify tenants if there's been any bedbug infestation in the building in the past year. Things might get better in the coming years with the passage of the Local Law 69 last year. That requires landlords of multi-family buildings to report a year's worth of infestation history for each apartment in their building, how they fixed the problem, and if it reoccured.

The bad news, according to Localize.city, is that the bedbug problems might not actually have lessened. They believe that tenants are now increasingly going directly to their landlord instead of filing official complaints, and that may have contributed to the decline in reported violations.

In Localize.city's analysis of Department of Housing and Preservation Development data between September 1, 2013 and August 31, 2018, the Bronx emerged as the borough with the highest rate of bedbug violations. However the neighborhood with the most bedbug violations per 1,000 renting households was Flatbush, in Brooklyn. If you're interested about your building, look it up on Localize.city, but for now, here are the 10 worst offenders in the city:

1. Flatbush, Brooklyn: 18.1
2. West Harlem, Manhattan: 17.1
3. Morrisania, Bronx: 16.7
4. Tremont, Bronx: 16.7
5. Wakefield, Bronx: 16.5
6. Prospect-Lefferts Gardens: 16.4
7. Concourse, Bronx: 16.3
8. Highbridge, Bronx: 15.3
9. Central Harlem, Manhattan: 14.9
10. Belmont, Bronx: 14.8

Head on over to Localize.city for more findings from the report. The New York Times first reported on the findings of the report.