Kumar Satya, a physician who has lived in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood since 2017, said the problem has become so severe that it reminds him of open defecation he witnessed growing up in India. “It was a very hot day two weeks ago, and you noticed tiny children just offering lemonade to people,” Satya said. But in recent years, the area has become inundated with what he called a “hazardous eyesore: dog poop.” This year, at least 175 people from the community board that includes Washington Heights filed dog waste complaints with the city, according to data obtained by the Guardian. The second-worst board has seen 116 complaints.
Citywide, complaints have climbed steadily. The city received 2,100 complaints in 2022, 2,659 in 2025, and more than 2,400 through early June 2026, according to data provided by Ray Legendre, a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation. Legendre attributed this year’s spike partly to a blizzard whose subsequent snow melt revealed weeks of accumulated dog waste.
The rise in complaints correlates with a surge in pet ownership. The American Veterinary Medical Association estimated there were 76 million pet dogs in the United States in 2016 and 88 million in 2021, the Guardian reported.
New York City was the first major U.S. city to require owners to pick up after their pets when it passed the “Pooper-Scooper Law” in 1978. Violators face fines of up to $250. But enforcement has proven difficult. In 2025, the sanitation department conducted patrols in Washington Heights, Harlem, Morningside Heights and Flatbush in response to 311 complaints but could not catch anyone, according to Vincent Gragnani, press secretary for the Department of Sanitation.
“The chances of someone not picking up after their dog while an enforcement officer is watching is very, very slim,” Gragnani said in an email. The city issued a total of two summonses last year.
City council members recently introduced the Safe and Clean Outdoor Ownership Practices Act, known as the Scoop Act. The legislation would require agencies to regularly fill waste bag dispensers near litter baskets, install signs about penalties, establish a pilot program to compost dog feces, and conduct an outreach campaign about the dangers of failing to remove waste.
“We are not looking to penalize anyone here; we are just looking to encourage people to do the right thing,” New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin said. “It’s not an enforcement approach. It’s an education, awareness and deterrent approach.”
Some residents say the city should do more to punish negligent owners. Diane O’Dwyer, a home healthcare aide living in Washington Heights, said she once saw a woman step out of a convertible, throw a poop bag into the street and enter a bodega. O’Dwyer threw the bag back into the woman’s car and ran. “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.”
Crystal Lee, a nurse and dog owner in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, said she and her neighbors have repeatedly witnessed the same person walking two dogs and letting them defecate on the sidewalk without cleaning up. They captured him on video and confronted him. “He has basically said, ‘F-you,’” Lee said. Her complaint to the sanitation department in May resulted in a finding of no violation. Lee said she is torn between accepting the situation and escalating. “I can go nuclear and be like, let’s post pictures of this guy, this repeat offender, and see if he has any shame.”
Harry Berberian, a Brooklyn resident who works with the dog rescue organization the Sato Project, said part of the problem is that dog owners are distracted by phones or other tasks. “I am one of those neighbors who goes out of my way to say something because I often observe people who are either on a phone call or busy taking care of something else,” Berberian said of walking in Fort Greene Park. Most people are not pleased when he confronts them, he added.
The problem is not unique to New York. In San Francisco, the average neighborhood saw a 400 percent increase in complaints to the city’s 311 hotline about dog or human waste between 2012 and 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In the United Kingdom, the practice of leaving filled poop bags on tree branches became so common during the pandemic that the Daily Record called it “the hanging gardens of jobbylon.”
Dog excrement contains bacteria, pathogens and parasites that can contaminate local water during heavy rain, posing a public health risk beyond its appearance and odor.