Residents of historic buildings on a tree-lined section of Upper Manhattan found a new feature in their neighborhood last week: large wheeled bins labeled “Trash.”
The sanitation department installed the shared dumpsters on residential streets in West Harlem as part of a pilot program inspired by operations in cities like Barcelona and Paris, where residents throw away trash in communal bins instead of leaving bags on sidewalks for collection. Officials say the goal is to reduce the city’s exploding rat population by eliminating the rodents’ access to food sources in household trash.
Caroline Miller, who lives with her husband on West 149th Street, said the dumpsters were set up outside her first-floor apartment without community input.
“I hate them so much. It is ridiculous. We got no notice, we got no say,” said Miller, a 36-year-old opera singer. “You pay a certain amount of rent for, like, a pretty, cute neighborhood feeling. Now it’s like I’m living in the back alley of a school building.”
“Can you imagine this being allowed on the Upper East Side? No way,” she added.
The bins were installed in clusters last week on each residential block between West 142nd and West 144th streets and between West 146th and West 153rd streets, from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue. The large containers were also installed outside several public schools in the neighborhood last month.
The sanitation department has halted curbside collection of trash bags in the pilot area. Crews now only pick up trash thrown in the new containers.
Adam Young, 43, who also lives on West 149th Street, said a city employee gave him a flier notifying him of the new rules and that the new bins would be coming to his block. But he said no further information was offered until he discovered three bins and yellow metal railings installed directly in front of his family’s Romanesque-style building.
“Obviously they did no research. They didn’t study the effect on the community. They didn’t talk to…
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