The Scarborough Rat Problem: What the City Is Doing and What You Must Do

Scarborough is the east end of the City of Toronto, and rats have become a more common sight here than they were a few years back. If they are already on your lot, the fix is rat control in Scarborough (burrows and sealing, not bait alone), and if the droppings are small, it is mouse control in Scarborough you need, from the same exterminator in Scarborough. In 2025 the City approved a formal Rat Response Plan to coordinate how it handles them, and that plan applies across Scarborough the same as anywhere in Toronto. For a property owner, two facts sit side by side: the City is now organizing its own side of the response, and you remain legally on the hook for keeping your property clear of rats under the rodent and property standards rules. This page covers why rat activity is climbing in the east end, what the Rat Response Plan actually does, what your duty is, and how and when to report rats to 311.

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Why are rats rising in Scarborough?

Rats are rising because the three things they depend on, food, water, and cover, have all become easier to find at the same time, and because digging and construction keep turning out the colonies that were already living here. Scarborough adds its own pressure on top of that: the district is threaded with ravines. Highland Creek, the Rouge valley and the Rouge National Urban Park, and the smaller valleys that run down toward the Bluffs give rats a permanent green corridor to travel and burrow along, and the many lots that back onto those ravines and onto parks sit right at the edge of it. A rat colony can live in the ravine and forage up into the backyards along the top of the bank without any one household ever being the source. The City's Rat Response Plan report points to a mix of drivers rather than any single one.

The main ones, as they play out in the east end:

• Construction and excavation. Digging disturbs established burrows and drives rats out into the surrounding streets to find new harbourage. The transit and sewer work along corridors like Eglinton East and the Kingston Road stretch is exactly the kind of long project that pushes colonies onto nearby residential blocks.
• Ravines and older sewers. Highland Creek, the Rouge valley, and Scarborough's older east-end sewer network give Norway rats water, cover, and travel routes straight into the postwar neighbourhoods built around them. Rats move underground through cracked and aging sewer lines and surface wherever the pipe is broken or a lateral is open.
• A growing apartment stock. The mid-rise and high-rise buildings going up and filling in along Kingston Road and the avenues concentrate people, waste, and shared garbage rooms, and a single poorly managed bin room or loading dock can feed a colony for a whole block.
• Organic waste and food. Green-bin organics, backyard compost, dropped fruit from the mature trees on Scarborough's big lots, pet food, and overflowing garbage all feed a colony and let it grow.
• Warmer conditions and mild winters that stretch the breeding season, so numbers bounce back faster year over year.
• Aging housing stock, including the 1950s-to-70s bungalows and back-splits with older foundations, which offers rats easy shelter and entry.

None of these sits inside one homeowner's control, which is part of why the City moved to a coordinated plan instead of leaving it all to individual complaints.

What is Scarborough's Rat Response Plan?

There is no separate Scarborough plan. Scarborough is part of Toronto, so the plan that applies here is the City of Toronto Rat Response Plan, approved through Council in 2025 to coordinate how the whole city reduces and manages rat populations across divisions rather than chasing rats one isolated complaint at a time. It sets up a more joined-up approach to prevention, response, and public information, and it treats rats as a shared city problem, not only a private pest issue on one lot.

In practice the Plan is about coordination: lining up the divisions that touch rats, from waste and water to bylaw enforcement and public health, tackling rats around construction and City property, and giving residents clearer guidance on prevention and reporting. That matters in Scarborough, where a colony displaced by ravine-edge or roadway construction can move through several backyards before anyone reports it. The full detail is in the City's Rat Response Plan report.

Council adopted the Plan on June 24, 2025, as item 2025.EC22.5. A few of its concrete moves matter for a Scarborough property owner. It sets up a Rat Response Coordination Team to pull the divisions together, and it directs targeted inspection and enforcement blitzes in rat hot spots rather than waiting on one complaint at a time, which in the east end means the blocks backing onto the ravines and the corridors under active construction. It reaches the biggest single driver, construction: private development and Metrolinx projects are now advised to include a rat management plan in their Construction Management Plan through the Site Plan Control process, with rats trapped before excavation begins so digging does not simply evict a colony onto the surrounding streets. That requirement lands directly on the long transit and utility digs along Eglinton East and Kingston Road. And it commits the City to reducing rodenticide use, leaning on removing food and shelter and using gases such as carbon monoxide in burrows rather than loose poison, which is the safer approach next to the district's ravines and parks.

The Plan changes how the City organizes its own response. It does not remove your legal duty to keep your own property free of rats. Those are two separate things, and it is easy to assume the first cancels the second. It does not.

What is a property owner's duty under the rodent bylaw?

Under Toronto's property standards rules, which cover Scarborough, the owner is responsible for keeping the property free of rodents and for clearing the conditions that harbour them. That duty stays with the owner no matter what the City is doing at the neighbourhood level, and it can be enforced.

The City's rodent control and property standards page spells out the expectation, set in Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 629: property must be kept free of rodents, and the conditions that attract or shelter them, such as accessible garbage, harbourage, and unsealed openings, have to be dealt with. An owner who lets a rat problem run can face a property standards order and enforcement on top of the infestation itself.

If you rent, the duty runs to your landlord, not to you. Under Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act a landlord has to keep a rental unit in a good state of repair and fit for habitation, and an active rat infestation is a maintenance failure the landlord must deal with. On top of that, Scarborough's apartment stock, including much of the growing rental supply along Kingston Road, falls under the City's RentSafeTO program, which sets building standards for apartments of three or more storeys and ten or more units and requires landlords to track and respond to pest issues. A tenant who reports rats to the landlord in writing and gets no action can escalate to 311 and RentSafeTO, and the City can inspect and order the building owner to treat. So in a rented unit the sequence is: tell the landlord in writing, then, if nothing happens, call 311 and cite RentSafeTO.

What do you actually have to do?

You have to strip out what feeds and shelters rats on your lot, close the openings they slip through, and deal with any active infestation instead of letting it run. That is the practical shape of the legal duty, and on a ravine-backing Scarborough lot the cover side of it takes real attention.

The concrete steps:

• Cut off the food. Secure garbage and green-bin organics in bins with tight lids, keep compost rodent-resistant or enclosed, gather fallen fruit from the yard trees, and never leave pet food outside.
• Remove the cover. Clear woodpiles, debris, and dense ground growth against the foundation, under decks, and around sheds, and pay particular attention to the ravine-side and fence-line edge of the yard, where burrows start out of sight.
• Seal the openings. Close gaps around pipes and utilities, foundation cracks in the older postwar builds, and holes under garage doors and at door corners, using metal and mortar a rat cannot gnaw through.
• Deal with an active infestation. If there are burrows, droppings, or runs, treat and collapse the burrows and knock the colony down, then keep the property maintained so it does not come back. Burrow work and exterior sealing are the heart of the job, which is why we cover them in detail on the rat control page.

Because rats move between properties, doing your part counts even when the source is next door or down in the ravine: a maintained lot is far less inviting, and it is the part the City can hold you to.

What should you do if you see a rat on your property?

Act on it the same week, because a single rat in daylight usually means a larger colony nearby. Rats are mostly nocturnal, so one you see in the daytime is a sign the population has outgrown its night-time cover and is being pushed out to forage, which on a ravine-backing Scarborough lot often means the colony is in the valley behind you. Do not reach for loose poison as a first move: it does not find the source, and near the Rouge and Highland Creek ravines it puts owls, hawks, and pets at risk.

Work through it in order:

• Confirm the signs. Look for burrows, which are smooth two to four inch holes near foundations, under decks and sheds, and along the fence line and ravine edge, plus dark droppings, greasy rub marks along runs, and fresh gnawing. If the droppings are small, closer to a grain of rice, you may be dealing with mice instead, which our mouse control page covers.
• Cut the food and cover the same day. Secure garbage and green-bin organics, lift fallen fruit and pet food, and clear the woodpiles and clutter the rat is sheltering in, paying attention to the back of the yard.
• Seal the openings around pipes, foundation cracks in the older builds, and garage door corners with metal and mortar a rat cannot chew.
• Deal with the burrows. Active burrows need to be treated and collapsed, not just filled, which is the core of a real rat control job. If the source is a neighbouring lot, a construction site, or the ravine behind you, report that to 311 while you handle your own property.

How and when do you report rats to 311?

Report to 311 when the problem touches City property, a City service, or a situation beyond your own lot, such as rats around a City construction site, in a park or ravine, tied to a sewer or roadway, or on a property that looks like it is not meeting the property standards rules. 311 is Toronto's central point for service requests and routes the issue to the division that handles it. Scarborough residents use the same Toronto 311, since Scarborough is part of the city.

You can reach 311 by phone at 311 within Toronto, or online through the City's 311 service. When you report, give the exact location and what you are seeing, burrows, droppings, sightings, so it lands with the right division. For rats kept to your own private property, 311 will usually point you to prevention and control, since clearing the infestation there is the owner's job, but flagging a wider source, such as an unmaintained property, a ravine-edge burrow field, or a construction site, is exactly what the City wants to hear so it can act on the shared part of the problem.

Integrated pest management and the move away from poison

Both City policy and modern pest control now point the same way: integrated pest management, which means cutting rats down by removing food and harbourage and sealing entry points first, and reaching for rodenticide sparingly and carefully rather than leaning on it. This reduced-rodenticide approach exists because poison on its own does not solve a rat problem and it carries real risk, a risk that matters near Scarborough's ravines and parks where poisoned rats become food for owls, hawks, and other wildlife.

Health Canada, through its Pest Management Regulatory Agency, regulates rodenticides and requires them to sit in tamper-resistant stations near homes, because loose bait poisons pets, children, and the wildlife that eats poisoned rats. The integrated approach leans on the parts that actually hold, sanitation and exclusion, and treats bait as a controlled supplement, not the plan. It is the same logic behind why a serious rat job is mostly burrow work and sealing rather than dropping poison and hoping.

Common questions

For what a professional rat treatment runs in the east end, see our pest control cost page.

Reviewed September 2026.

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