Advocacy group fights bed bug outbreak

VANCOUVER - Community advocacy group the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users VANDU is trying to fight a massive outbreak of bedbugs in that city’s Downtown Eastside by gutting infested rooms.

The group’s Anne Livingston says residents have had six weeks notice to decide what to do with their possesions.

After the rooms are gutted, crews move in to spray with powerful chemicals to kill the bed bugs.
Livingston says residents get to bring 60 pounds of clothing out of their apartments that will be laundered and returned to them.

Anne Livingston and VANDU were mentioned here in a post in March. Last summer, they got a $51,000 government grant to provide a round of 2 PCO treatments for bed bugs in two badly infested Downtown Eastside hotels. The residents also got replacement furniture and beds.

The city commissioned a study which said 1/2 of those rooms were bed bug free two months later.

Although the funding was probably was not enough treatment to achieve a higher success rate (which would likely require more PCO visits in many cases), the VANDU activisits definitely know what they’re doing. Back in March, we quoted an article in which Livingston said,

“You really need to create a system whereby you can knock on the door, get a room prepped, get the spray guys in and come back in 10 days and do it again,” said Livingston.

“And then, the real project is to not have people pulling bedbug-infested garbage out of the alley into another place. This creates constant reinfection. So that’s why it needs to be a neighbourhood campaign.”

Livingstone said bedbugs are a growing problem everywhere in Vancouver, and trying to get rid of them in the city’s poorest neighbourhood is money well spent.

Education, as we keep saying, is key–for residents of every treated building, I might add, whether it’s an SRO hotel, an expensive NYC co-op apartment building, a tenement, or a homeless shelter. (Remember, I live in NYC, where well-to-do professionals shop at bohemian flea markets, and yuppies take used furniture off the curb.)

I applaud the work of Livingston and the other folks at VANDU. I know with more funding and support, they will be able to continue to make a huge difference in peoples’ lives.

I hate that community activists like VANDU and the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston have to step in, since I think we need more infrastructure and government assistance helping people get good bed bug treatment and supplies they need (from XL ziplocs to furniture). Both of these groups have had government funding, which is great. I just think they probably need a lot more.

And is anyone in NYC or San Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, or anywhere else doing similar work? We’d love to hear about it.

• Vancouver community activists urge city to pay for bed bug eradication
• Government money needed to help people pay for bed bug treatment
• 80% of Single Room Occupancy units in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside are infested with bed bugs; also Rensselaer Polytechnic’s dorms
• Itchy the Bed Bug: an Olympic Mascot for Vancouver

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The ABCDC is the only group in Massachusetts that helps people pay for treatment. Boston, surrounding towns, and especially Allston-Brighton, has a serious bed bug epidemic.

We’ve covered the ABCDC’s bed bug prevention and treatment efforts before. We think they’re awesome. It’s just sad that more help is not available. If governments (local, state, federal) and corporations want to stop the spread of bed bugs, more help is needed for homeowners, landlords, and renters. If people can’t pay for what’s needed to get rid of bed bugs, they will eventually spread to everyone. I’d like to see the government helping people directly, but until then, I hope more community / social service agencies will step forward and build on the ABCDC model. And I hope people will fund them.

Thanks to Keets for pointing us to the article!

• Vancouver community activists urge city to pay for bed bug eradication
• Boston and bed bugs: Mayor Bloomberg in NYC could learn a thing or two
• And another ray of hope from Vancouver’s VANDU
• And so, it gets worse: bed bugs on the move

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There was much content and these few paragraphs I write here can cover only some things that struck me. This post unfortunately cannot serve as a comprehensive overview of the many topics that were raised or speakers who addressed us, not all of which I could comment on below. It was an excellent program and I’m sorry it wasn’t pod-casted for everyone here to participate and benefit.

The conference gave out a one-page resource guide and our blog was listed 4 times. Not only bedbugger.com, but also three specific URLs for FAQ’s. (think-you-have-bed-bugs, advice-on-getting treatment, how-do-I-protect my bed).

The overall tone was set by the first speaker, a Senior Health Inspector/toxicologist, with the first slides “Got bedbugs? Act immediately. No time for blame.” There were leaders from the Allston Brighton Community Development group that is so pro-active about bedbugs, and someone from Somerville who was also a great community activist. These were caring, sharp people who are out in the municipal trenches!

One presentation at the conference was a live demonstration of a home inspection. They had a mattress and box spring right there on the stage and inspected it. They felt an inspection should take a minimum of an hour and that the inspector should look at the underside of your box spring. Though they felt that with current practices, mattresses could be bagged and furniture treated, but they said that box springs frequently had to be discarded.

There was a lively one-hour question period with a panel of savvy inspectors and local PCOs (which I learned can also be called PMPs now). They knew their stuff. They were very much into people not moving when they had bedbugs. They said they had a case where a unit was so infested the two tenants were moved into a hotel. The tenants moved with only their medications and the clothes they had on. In three days there was evidence these tenants had taken bedbugs with them to the hotel! So they said unless you shower, put new clothes on, and take absolutely **nothing** with you, there is a chance you can take bedbugs with you. (My note: I wonder if bedbugs were transported in shoes or a wallet or the cuff of a pant leg or something?)

The PCOs were fan of using hair dryers when one inspects. Not to kill bedbugs, though they did agree you might be able to kill a bedbug if you a hair dryer up close to it on very high for 5 minutes or more — they used hair dryers as “an inspectional tool” to test to see where bedbugs were when they went into an apartment. They said bedbugs were frequently in clock radios by the bed, and you could aim a hot hair dryer at something like a clock radio and the heat would make the bedbugs come out of the unit.

Though they showed various pesticides, including SteriFab, which they said was 90% alcohol and a contact killer. They said pretty much anything could kill bedbugs on contact, but the problem was you rarely saw bedbugs and you wanted something that would kill the ones you didn’t see.

They were against preventive spraying and said it did nothing. They said preventive inspections were what you should do, and stressed education of everyone, e.g., how hotels had trained housekeeping to look for bedbugs.

In the afternoon there was a panel of three lawyers. The lawyers stressed cooperation and not having an adversarial relationship with the landlord. They said bedbug cases the victims were usually awarded punitive damages of 3 to 7 times the cost incurred, plus legal fees which can be high. They talked of a case where the punitive damages were $26,000 and the legal fees were $25,000, so the landlord had to pay a lot.

In Massachusetts, a landlord who has more than a certain number of tenants (not a small landlord who is living in a 3-family house with the tenants) is considered as running a business and you can go against the landlord as a business using the Consumer Protection Act. They refer to it as 93A, and you have to start with a “93A demand letter.” There were many grey areas, such as who paid if tenants needed to have furniture replaced or if they had to have alternative housing. The panel of lawyers thought the landlord should not only pay for the extermination, repeated ones, but also for the cleaning of the clothes. They said a landlord could not refuse to rent to you if you had bedbugs because it would be discriminatory.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day. There was a lot of other information conveyed that I already knew so I didn’t refer to it here. I realized how I had learned so much from this blog already, but, even so, it was amazing to go to a day-long bedbug conference and learn even more. I particularly liked being surrounded by people who clearly know how serious the bedbug problem is and are educated and committed to addressing it. Great job.

Any errors in my interpretation of what was said at the conference are my own. They were the experts. I was just gratefully taking notes as I learned more at a day at “The College of Bedbug Knowledge.”

PS: There was some discussion of how pets can have bedbugs. They even showed a slide with a parakeet. I know my parakeets were bitten by bedbugs, and it brought a tear to my eye and I was touched, not just because of my screen name here.

• Saskatoon professional development conference apparently bedbugged
• Bed bugs in Lincoln, Nebraska
• Jersey City hotel closed due to fire safety and bed bug violations
• Boston and bed bugs: Mayor Bloomberg in NYC could learn a thing or two

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This article in the Quad-Cities Online reported yesterday on bed bug infestations in a public housing complex in East Moline, Illinois. The reporter quotes one resident who has been battling bed bugs since fall.

“I work too. My tax dollars are going to support places like this (government run low-income housing). If people knew how disgusting this is, I’m sure they’d be upset,” said a resident of the Joseph Fulton Homes. The woman asked to remain anonymous.

Interestingly, a number of comments to the article also note that low-income folks should not have to live like that. At least one commenter (going by the name “some anonymous person”) mentions that “only the poor have to live like this.”

Well, not exactly. While it’s true that in this case, it’s a low-income residence, sadly, people of every social class and walk of life are having to deal with bed bugs. Many, many people we hear from at bedbugger.com — low-income, moderate-income and middle-class– have a problem getting their landlords to treat the problem promptly and effectively. The rich are perhaps in the best situation, since they have more possibility of moving, but this problem is not easy for anyone, and everyone who suffers from bed bugs suffers and takes a hit. And it can afflict anyone at any time.

We need better government support for fighting bed bugs, because nobody should have to suffer this problem for long (and a week is too long).

A second local public housing complex, a senior apartment building called Warren Towers, also has units with bed bug infestations, a story which was covered by the Quad-Cities Online on May 30th.

In other news, even though I have a google alert which tells me when people mention bed bugs in the news or in their blogs, I don’t usually mention non-bed-bug-blogs in our news round-ups. There are just too many people blogging their infestations on a daily basis to keep up.

But today, one caught my eye: this professional blog at LibraryJournal.com, suggests that folks are starting to talk about their bed bug infestations not just amongst their nearest and dearest, or in the workplace, but amongst colleagues they may not know well. That’s good news: talking about bed bugs means more people learn about the problem, how to spot it, and its likelihood of appearing in their lives, too.

Bravo to Heather McCormack at Library Journal, and Heather–we hope your Brooklyn bed bugs are on their way out!

Meanwhile, Lisa Hoffman’s Scripps News article on bed bugs (the one also published in the Knoxville News) continues to make the rounds of syndication, now in the Albuquerque Tribune.

Next, for anyone in Boston who does not have to work next Wednesday, the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation is having a Bed Bug Conference.

2nd Greater Boston Bed Bug Conference: Extermination and Legislation
Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 8:30AM - 3:00PM

There is still time to register! Registraton is $25.00 and includes lunch and refreshments. (Click the link above to get to the ABCDC site and download the registration form.)

Sponsored by the Greater Boston Bedbug Task Force, this event will provide updated information about the bed bug outbreak to more than 200 exterminators, inspectors, health providers, property managers/landlords, tenants and housing advocates, as well as members of the general public.

There’s also information at the same link for local residents to apply for a grant from the ABCDC to fight bed bugs in your home. Allston Brighton residents take note! We’re big fans of the ABCDC’s bed bug-fighting attempts (some of which are mentioned here), and we’d be glad to hear about other community organizations that are trying to help people with bed bugs, or help people avoid getting bed bugs in the first place.

And finally, today some tenants in a Jamaica, Queens apartment set off a roach bomb which exploded, harming them and damaging their apartment and belongings.

Authorities say the explosion shattered the windows of Apartment 4E at 164-30 Hillside Avenue just after 12:30 p.m. Thursday.

Some residents inside the apartment were overcome, and at least two were taken to the hospital.

The force of the explosion reportedly blew pieces of the fourth-floor window onto a construction shed and the street.

Fire officials said the roach bomb explosion may have been sparked by a pilot light or a refrigerator compressor.

In case the fact that bug bombs do not work to rid your apartment of bed bugs did not dissuade you from using one, they’re also apparently potentially dangerous.
ABC 7’s photo shows what looks to be much of the apartment’s contents pushed up against the (blown-out) window.

I realize the news reports this as a roach bomb, but since there are (for good reason) no over-the-counter bed bug bombs, since we know people attempt to use bombs made for other pests to eradicate bed bugs, and since Queens is experiencing a lot of bed bug infestations, I do have to wonder if that might have been the case here.

Don’t try that at home, kids!

• craigslist: An Open Letter to my Bedbugs
• Toronto Star: Within five years, bedbugs “will be more common than mice, roaches, carpenter ants”
• Surrey, B.C. public housing infested with bed bugs
• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House

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