Unfortunately, bed bugs are hard to detect and hard to treat.

Your students’ families may not know they have bed bugs at home, especially at first. They are hard to find and not everyone reacts to bed bug bites. Once people do realize they have them, infestations may be quite serious, and neighbors may also be infested.

If your students’ parents are renting, in NYC, it is generally the landlord’s responsibility to treat. This can lead to delays– parents must detect bed bugs, complain to landlord, convince landlord to treat, in some cases contact the city and wait for inspectors to come, inspect, declare a housing violation, and force landlords to treat. And then the landlord’s PCO must undertake treatment, which can take 3 or more visits spaced 2 weeks apart. Some will not follow up, either because they do not think there are bed bugs, or because parents don’t insist, and so infestations may persist.

Other PCOs may not know how to get rid of bed bugs. And landlords may not authorize and pay them to inspect neighbors’ apartments and treat them if evidence of bed bugs is found. In some cases, entire buildings become infested as small cases are mismanaged and spread.

I say all this because the matter of getting students’ homes to be bed bug-free is really a very difficult process. It is not necessarily the parents’ fault, since getting rid of bed bugs in a NYC rental involves cooperation between landlords, tenants, and pest control operators. In the best scenario, it is expensive and time-consuming. In the worst scenario, it may take forever.

You are absolutely right that students’ homes must be thoroughly and quickly treated (and remember — teachers and staff may also be the source of bed bugs). I believe the city must do more to educate parents and teachers/staff about bed bugs, how to avoid spreading them, and how to get help. The city needs to do more to help tenants. (Many people who do call 311 because landlords are not fixing the problem do not even get an inspector to come. We’re told that NYCHPD currently cannot manage all of its requests for bed bug inspections.)

Though I think the full health effects are better felt when people live with bed bugs for months and months during treatment. I’d probably ask people who doubted bed bugs were a health problem to live in infested properties for 6 months.