The holidays have passed, the decorations are stashed away, and your Fort Lee apartment feels less inviting than it has in weeks. Well, January and February are the sneaky season for rodents in multi-unit buildings. In short, after the holidays, food waste, reduced building maintenance, and lower temperatures invite rodents into apartments.
In high-rise and mid-rise Fort Lee, with an increasingly dense grid, a one-unit problem becomes everybody’s problem very quickly. These rodents do not just appear; they have been residing in our homes. After the holiday season, they give us plenty of reasons to stay active & be in the light.
Spotting signs of a rodent infestation in your unit is a reason to contact a qualified pest professional from Alliance Pest Services as soon as possible, as it can prevent the issue from spreading.
Why January and February Are Peak Rodent Months in Fort Lee?
Rodent activity is a perfect storm during the post-holiday window, and it starts with food. During the holiday, visitors will cook more at home, host more guests, and generate at least 30% more food waste than usual.
More than 133 billion pounds of food are wasted in the United States each year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, and we waste an outsized share of that food during the holidays. For apartment complexes, this means chutes overflowing with rubbish, recycling bins filled beyond capacity, and crumbs and spills that don’t get tidied up as quickly as they do in the quieter months.
Then January hits. Temperatures in Fort Lee often fall into the 20s and 30s, with rodents, especially Norway rats and house mice, in search of warmth. Building maintenance crews typically work on less regular schedules over the holidays, so trash areas, basement spaces, and shared mechanical rooms receive less attention precisely when rodent activity is starting to ramp up.
With ample food supplies, cold outdoor temperatures, and reduced maintenance of apartment building facilities, a perfect storm exists for the rapid and silent expansion of rodent colonies within the walls of complexes.
Where Rodents Are Getting In (It Is Not Where You Think)
Many Fort Lee residents believed that if rodents were entering, it was likely through entrances such as front doors or windows. As is so often the case with these matters, the reality is less transparent than we would like, which is why the problem persists.
In apartment complexes, rodents use the building’s internal infrastructure rather than external entry points that residents can see or manage. The pathways they use include:
- Vertical plumbing chases and pipe penetrations, rising through each floor, often with voids around the water and gas lines, are never caulked during construction.
- HVAC and ventilation ducts between the units, especially in older Fort Lee buildings, where ductwork was compromised, or screens have worn away.
- Unsealed openings in walls and floors where contractors ran cable and internet lines to homes.
- Trash chute areas and laundry rooms on each floor.
- Continuous vertical shafts from the basement to the top floor: elevator shaft surrounds and utility closets.
- Basement mechanical rooms and crawl spaces, which is were rodents first settle, before moving upward.
Protecting Your Apartment Before the Problem Grows
Rodent pressure in Fort Lee apartment complexes is not a problem over which a few residents can wield control. The building’s common systems are a rat highway, and even if one unit is sealed, the next door still allows pests to move back and forth. Despite this, residents can take important action while also pressuring building management to step up.
On the building side, the conversation must be held at the management level. Fort Lee apartment complexes can attest to this type of post-holiday rodent spike, and this is exactly some of the work people have completed with Alliance Pest Services. Instead of just looking at individual units, they conduct assessments of the entire building, specifically the common infrastructure and areas where rodents run and reproduce.
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