Washington Heights resident Kumar Satya recalls the moment he realized his beloved neighborhood had changed. A physician who has lived there since 2017, Satya had cherished the local parks, the street conversations, the sound of children playing. Then came the dog poop.
This year alone, at least 175 complaints about dog waste have been filed from the community board covering Washington Heights, making it the worst hotspot in the city. The second-worst area saw 116 complaints. The problem has grown so acute that it prompted New York City officials to pursue new legislation aimed at curbing what many residents describe as a quality-of-life crisis.
Satya finds the situation particularly galling. "I grew up in India, where open defecation is a problem," he said. "This reminds me of that."
The rise in neglected dog waste tracks directly with a surge in pet ownership. The American Veterinary Medical Association counted 76 million pet dogs in the United States in 2016. By 2021, that number had climbed to nearly 88 million, a jump largely attributed to pandemic-driven isolation and remote work.
New York City's complaints have followed the same trajectory. In 2022, the city fielded 2,100 complaints about dog waste. By 2025, that number reached 2,659. This year alone, the city has already received more than 2,400 complaints, with city officials attributing part of the spike to a recent blizzard that, when it melted, exposed weeks of accumulated waste.
The problem extends far beyond New York. San Francisco saw a 400% increase in complaints about dog or human waste between 2012 and 2021. During the pandemic in the United Kingdom, the problem became so rampant that the Daily Record mocked it as "the hanging gardens of jobbylon," referring to poop bags abandoned on tree branches.
What makes the issue more than just an aesthetic nuisance is the public health threat. Dog waste contains bacteria, pathogens and parasites that can contaminate local water supplies during heavy rain.
New York passed the Pooper-Scooper Law in 1978, becoming the first major U.S. city to require dog owners to pick up after their pets. Violators face fines up to $250. Yet enforcement has proven nearly impossible. In 2025, the sanitation department conducted patrols in Washington Heights, Harlem, Morningside Heights and Flatbush but caught no one in the act. The entire city issued just two summons last year.
"The chances of someone not picking up after their dog while an enforcement officer is watching is very, very slim," said Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the sanitation department.
The frustration runs deep among residents who witness repeat offenders. In Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Crystal Lee watched the same person repeatedly let two dogs defecate on sidewalks without cleaning up. She recorded video evidence, confronted him directly, and even submitted a complaint to the city in May. The department of sanitation investigated and found no violation. "It's just incredibly frustrating," Lee said.
Harry Berberian, a Brooklyn dog owner who works for a dog rescue organization, often observes walkers too distracted by their phones to notice or care about their dogs' waste. When he tries to address the behavior politely, "most people are not very pleased," he said.
Now city council members have introduced the Safe and Clean Outdoor Ownership Practices (Scoop) Act, which would require agencies to regularly stock waste bag dispensers next to litter baskets, install penalty warning signs, establish a pilot composting program for dog waste, and launch an outreach campaign about the health dangers.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin framed the approach as education rather than punishment. "We are not looking to penalize anyone here," she said. "We are just looking to encourage people to do the right thing." The strategy aims to remove excuses by making bags readily available.
Some residents, however, want tougher enforcement. Diane O'Dwyer, a Washington Heights home healthcare aide, once witnessed a woman toss a poop bag into the street from her convertible. O'Dwyer chased her down and retrieved it. She pointed to Liverpool's success with aggressive enforcement, where authorities handed out 45 fines in a single month in 2025. "I know it's a tough city to deal with," O'Dwyer said of New York, "but don't have fines posted and not enforce them."
Author James Rodriguez: "New York finally learned you can't guilt people into being decent neighbors, but the city is still betting persuasion works better than enforcement,a gamble that ignores what residents already know."
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