Fall is rat season in Toronto — here's how to check your building's pest record

Every September, the same thing happens: nights get cooler, the ravines and construction sites get less hospitable, and Toronto's rats start looking for somewhere warm. Garbage rooms, chute rooms, and parking garages are the usual entry points — which is why pest complaints in apartment buildings climb through the fall.

This is the first autumn under the City's Rat Response Plan, approved by council in July 2025. It's worth knowing what it does — and what it doesn't.

What the Rat Response Plan actually covers

The plan is a coordination effort, not an extermination service. Its main pieces:

• A rat response coordination team linking the divisions that touch rodent problems (Public Health, Municipal Licensing & Standards, Solid Waste, Transportation), starting mid-2026.
• A public education campaign and pest-prevention website, launched in early 2026.
• Pilots of non-rodenticide controls — carbon monoxide burrow treatments, "smart" traps, and remote sensors — on public land.
• A hotspot analysis by late 2026 into 2027, using 311 complaints, bylaw inspections, and public-health reports.

The catch: the plan targets City property and coordination. If rats are in your building, getting rid of them is still the property owner's responsibility — and that's already the law under Toronto's property standards bylaw.

For a tenant, then, the question isn't whether the City will fix it. It's whether your landlord has a track record of fixing it. That's public.

Three RentSafeTO lines that matter

If you're in a building with 3+ storeys or 10+ units, the City's RentSafeTO inspection scores it category by category, 0–3. Most people only look at the overall number. For pests, look at these three:

• Common area pests — did the inspector actually see evidence of pests in hallways, garbage rooms, or lockers?
• Pest control log — does the building keep the required record of pest-control treatments? A missing log means nobody's tracking the problem.
• Garbage/compactor room and chute rooms — the rooms that feed rats. A low score here is the leading indicator; the pest sighting comes later.

A worked example: 200 Wellesley St E, a 719-unit tower built in 1970, scores 82/100 on its November 2025 evaluation (a B). Its pest lines look fine — 3/3 on common-area pests, the pest control log, and the garbage/compactor room. But chute rooms scored 1/3, alongside interior hallways and stairwells at 1. That's the pattern to notice: the pest-facing categories are clean today, while the room that feeds the garbage system isn't. It's not a rat problem — it's where one would start. (Data via PropertyMonitorTO, from the City's Apartment Building Evaluation dataset.)

Beyond the score: orders and investigations

RentSafeTO evaluations happen once every one to three years. For what's happening now, check two other records:

• Bylaw investigations — every 311 complaint that gets an inspector. The public dataset classifies most as "Property Standards" without saying what was wrong, so a cluster of open investigations is the signal, not the label. That same Wellesley tower shows 39 investigations since mid-2024, 4 still active, and five Orders to Comply.
• Orders — when an inspector finds a violation, an Order to Comply names the defect and a deadline. Pest infestations do get written up here.

A building with a clean pest score, no open orders, and a handful of quickly-closed investigations is well-managed. One with a low garbage-room score and a pile of open investigations in September is going to have a long winter.

If you already have rats

• Report it in writing to the landlord, with dates and photos. Pest control in a rental is the landlord's obligation, not yours.
• Call 311 if nothing happens within a reasonable time. That creates the investigation record — the one future tenants will see.
• Seal what you can: gaps under doors, around pipes, and behind appliances. Rats need about a 2 cm opening.
• Don't put out rodenticide yourself in a multi-unit building; it moves the problem and the poison to your neighbours.

Check before the cold snap

Search your address on the Building report card and look at the pest, garbage, and chute-room lines — not just the total. Then pull the investigations and orders records for what's open right now. If you're shopping for a lease, do it for the building you're considering and the one next door; rats don't respect property lines.

Turn on monitoring and a new order or investigation on your building lands in your inbox — before the rats do.