Remember when we reported back in June 2008 that a new RainCity Housing development in Vancouver was going to contain a “bed bug sauna” for treatment of infested items?

The new building “The Lux”, at 65 Hastings Street, is in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a highly infested neighborhood, and provides 25 transitional housing units, and 67 supported long-term housing units.  And they’ve started baking tenants’ bed bugs.

RainCity is a chartiable organization which provides housing to people who need it.  Their website states,

The men and women who benefit from the services of RainCity Housing are treated with dignity and respect, and are offered a safe place to live, independence and improved quality of life.

Nothing says “dignity and respect” as much as helping people to live without the presence of bed bugs.

The Vancouver Courier reported of the new sauna room, that

Staff take bed bug-infested furniture to a 200-square-foot cream-coloured room with a grey cement floor and four metal troughs. A gas boiler heats water and an electric fan spreads heat throughout the room. Simpson, operations manager for RainCity, wraps infested mattresses, carries them carefully to the ground floor room, cranks the dry heat to 60 degrees Celsius for four to six hours, and watches bed bugs creep from the highest point of an item down, until they dry out and fall off.

It does not replace bed bug treatment for the unit, but does mean tenants do not have to throw out belongings which they may have been asked to toss in the past.

However,

RainCity hasn’t run the belongings of tenants moving into The Lux through the oven before they get set up, but it might do so when the flow of tenants moving in decreases. The nine-storey building provides low-barrier transitional housing with intensive staffing on two floors, and provides apartments for men and women who have a history of homelessness.

In my opinion, it would be best to run new tenants’ belongings through the unit.   Many people will not notice they have bed bugs until the problem is pronounced — especially since many people do not react to bed bug bites.  And tenants with bed bugs can spread bed bugs to others via common areas, and outside of the building (buses, hangouts, etc.).

With construction and consultant costs, Simpson estimates the bed bug room cost $8,000 out of the $22 million it took to construct 92 new social housing units in the Downtown Eastside. Extra money was spent in an attempt to seal each unit. Electrical outlets include flanges to keep bed bugs at bay. RainCity’s maintenance contract with a pest control company continues but in this new building, treating rooms above, below and next to an infested one shouldn’t be necessary.

$8000 out of $22 million?   Peanuts.

And simply sealing each unit carefully from the outset may go a long way to helping prevent bed bugs spreading.

The bed bug sauna idea is attracting interest from public housing provider BC Housing:

Bill Briscall, RainCity’s communications manager, said B.C. Housing is interested in including bed bug saunas at each of the 12 city-owned sites where social housing is planned. RainCity Housing runs shelters, including the controversial HEAT shelters under Granville Bridge, long-term housing, outreach programs, life skills and food services.

The Globe and Mail also reported on the Bed Bug Sauna at The Lux (PDF here).Similar Posts:

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• Mark Sheperdigian on the limits of bed bug inspections

A recent article from the Vancouver Courier was prompted by a woman’s sighting of bugs on a seat,

Kara Ardan was sitting near the back of a Hastings Street bus earlier this month, when something on the seat in front of her made her jump to her feet.

“I just saw something move,” she said. “It was probably a body louse. A good sized one, too. There were a few of them just hanging out there on the back of the seat.”

So the Vancouver Courier asks the valid question of whether local public transportation buses have bed bugs, and we’re told that

… Derek Zabel, the manager of media relations for Coast Mountain Bus Company, says Coast Mountain has had few reports of bugs on buses and none of its vehicles have been fumigated. Every three to four months each bus is scrubbed from top to bottom and a steam cleaning “extractor” sucks the contents out of the cushy seats.

TransLink switched to cloth seats in 2006 and 2007 because people with limited mobility could too easily slip off the old vinyl seats. Of its fleet of 1,400 buses, about 480 have cloth seats.

Then the following claim:

Brian Johnston, a supervisor in environmental health with Vancouver Coastal Health, doubts cloth or vinyl matters when it comes to bugs. He said bed bugs aren’t often transported on people. They generally feed when their human victims are in their deepest slumber, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., and then hide. Johnston said bed bugs are lazy, or smart. They don’t stray far from their food source, so if bed bugs bite your ankles, they’re probably living near the foot of your bed.

[Emphasis mine.]

We’ve actually heard that bed bugs are proficient hitchhikers.

Reports of bed bugs on public transportation used to be commonplace.

If bed bugs don’t get transported on people or their stuff, how in the world would bed bugs be spreading from place to place, not just within buildings? How would they have gotten into this Victoria, BC pediatric unit? Or this Vancouver Island detox? Or this fancy hotel?

Just because bed bugs are most likely to be found in beds, does not mean they do not travel.

Perhaps Johnston’s point is that everyone with bed bugs is not going to be carrying them and distributing them everywhere they go all the time. (True.)

However, bed bugs do travel with people, make no mistake.

That’s how our friend Sneaky Simes gets around all the time.

See Coast Mountain denies buses infested with bugs.

See also this related story: Times Article on Spread of Bed Bugs via Trains, Planes and Automobiles.Similar Posts:

• Megan McArdle on Atlantic.com: bed bugs and Craigslist
• Bed bugs bite Edmonton
• Bed bugs continue to multiply in Winnipeg
• Pest Control Technology’s Aug. 2009 bed bug supplement
• Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009: new and improved

It’s getting to the stalemate portion of the bedbugs-in-your-building experience:

Ted Kuhn Tower tenants are still living with bed bugs. And management is blaming other tenants who refuse treatment and/or bring in discarded bed bug-infested gear.

Here’s the problem: tenants who do cooperate with treatment should not be punished because others don’t.

Read the update on Ted Kuhn (affixed to a post from last month) here.Similar Posts:

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The Official 2010 Olympics Newswire blogger David Eby says

News is ripping through the DTES that BC Housing may have found an effective way to control bedbug populations in SRO hotels.

The DTES is Vancouver’s bed bug-beleaguered Downtown Eastside.

And now, Eby continues,

BC Housing determined that ‘food grade diatomaceous earth, fresh water based’ within the wall cavities of SRO hotels will be a very effective method for dealing with the pesky critters.

We’ve heard about the drill-holes-in-the-wall-and-fill-them-with-DE method before, and have heard of PCOs doing this to help counteract the spread of bed bugs within the walls of buildings, from one unit to another.

It seems like a useful enough measure, but luckily, it does not seem to be the whole plan.

This BC Housing Newsletter (click for a PDF, see page 4) indicates the organization is considering and/or trying out some of the newest bed bug technologies including bed bug sniffing dogs, extreme temperatures, steam, thermal treatment (such as the sauna placed in the new RainCity development) and (this is a new one to me) smoke pellets which are said to be currently in use in the US but not yet approved by Health Canada.

As DTES resident stephanie argues in the comments, the plan is not a cure-all, and instead,

BC Housing should be getting a pest control company to treat infested buildings as a cleanout – each infested unit, plus the units above, below, and on either side, or even building-wide. *Minimum* two treatments two weeks apart. There is no substitute for a comprehensive, well-executed pest control strategy.

The other thing they should be doing is routine inspections for bedbugs – every three months to start, cutting back to every six, maybe, once it’s under control. A very large number of people don’t react to the bites, so they don’t become aware they have the bugs until the bugs become visible – and given how well bedbugs hide, if you start seeing them you have a very serious infestation on your hands. Relying on self-reporting, combined with inadequate landlord response, is what’s got a lot of buildings into this mess in the first place.

Yup. We know self-reporting is inadequate in terms of determining which units are infested.

stephanie also gives her bed bug activism credentials:

A note: the reason I can yabber about this is because I’ve been involved in DTES community responses to the bedbug crisis, and because I helped to develop my DTES co-op’s bedbug strategy. It’s worked. Because we’ve been proactive with inspections and treatment (including helping disabled members with unit prep, etc.), we haven’t had a single instance of unit-to-unit transmission in my building.

Right on, stephanie! Sounds like the rallying cry to potential members of (the as yet not existing to my knowledge) Vancouver vs. Bed Bugs.

Shout out to my fellow bed bug activists.

I got to this story via Beyond Robson.

This is the Vancouver page on the Bed Bug Registry.

This is Vancouver Coastal Health’s Guide to Bed Bug Control.Similar Posts:

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Maciej from the Bed Bug Registry has let me know of a few site improvements he’s added.

First, you can look up hotels and see all reports for a given chain. Here’s an example. Of course, no chain is immune to bed bugs, but companies may deal proactively with bed bugs to different degrees.

Also, you can now enter an address at the Bed Bug Registry and get an alert if anyone later reports bed bugs at the address.

Don’t assume that no report for your address is necessarily good news, however; most people still don’t post their infestations on the registry.

But look at what happens when they do: this Vancouver address has 108 reports.

It looks like these folks are using the Registry to do their tenant organizing!

Thanks, Maciej, for the site, and for sharing your news!Similar Posts:

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• New York City bed bug numbers, Bedbugger-style

The Vancouver Sun reports,

Bedbug complaints in Metro Vancouver, which first started in 2003 with 40 complaints, have doubled each year for the past five years, said local expert Shelley Beaudet.

That means there were:

40 bed bug complaints in 2003,

80 in 2004,

160 in 2005,

320 in 2006,

640 in 2007, and

1280 in 2008.

That’s a total of 2,520 in five years.  And I imagine those are just the official complaints.  I would guess most bed bug cases never get officially reported by fearful tenants, their landlords, or homeowners.

When buildings like the one in Pendrell Street, described in this article, have 114 units and are 80% infested (that’s 91 infested units), it’s hard to believe the numbers aren’t even higher.

They will be soon, if this keeps up at the current rate: we can expect

2,560 complaints in 2009

5,120 in 2010 (just in time for the Vancouver Olympics!), and a whopping

10,240 official bed bug complaints in three years’ time, in 2011.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Vancouver needs to aggressively treat this problem, especially in the besieged and densely populated Downtown Eastside community.

There is some hope in that developers are beginning to respond to this problem.  The article mentions the new RainCity development going up in Vancouver which will have a built-in sauna for decontaminating infested items.

The Vancouver Sun also goes into the stress bed bugs cause:

[exterminator Mark Amery of Vancouver Bed Bug Control Inc.] said living with bedbugs is stressful. “Usually [people] are sleep-deprived because the bedbugs eat at night,” Amery said. “Some people are crying on the phone. Some people are just done.”

Don’t we know it!Similar Posts:

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Wendy Stueck writes in today’s Globe and Mail that a new Vancouver apartment building is going to have a sauna for decontaminating bed bug-infested items. Talk about planning ahead:

. . . a housing complex under construction in Vancouver will include what’s been dubbed the “bedbug sauna,” a room where furniture, clothing and other belongings can be heated to a point that kills Cimex lectularius, the common bedbug enjoying a worldwide resurgence.

The idea was born of frustration with the rising cost of treating bedbug infestations and the desire to find some way to get rid of them that wouldn’t force people to throw away their belongings, says George Simpson, operations manager for RainCity Housing, the non-profit group that has ordered the bug room for a 92-unit complex now under construction.

“Inevitably, belongings had to be disposed of that couldn’t be treated or laundered,” says Mr. Simpson, for whom bedbugs have become a major headache in recent years.

The room will be big enough to hold mattresses and other bulky furniture, and equipped with technology that allows contents to be heated to a point that cooks bugs and their eggs.

It’s not a bad idea.

Parakeets fantasized about her idea of an apartment with attached sauna for decontamination purposes repeatedly on the Bedbugger yahoo group. And along similar lines, I spoke about getting items decontaminated (”sauna’d”) here and elsewhere.

I think it’s a great idea that people are thinking about ways to help people get rid of bed bugs in the future, even while constructing new developments.

The planners got advice from pest control firm Steritech:

The concept is sound, says Judy Black, technical director with Steritech Group Inc., a U.S. pest-control company that last year briefed Vancouver hoteliers on the pests.

“Bedbugs are relatively insusceptible to cold, but they are very sensitive to heat,” says Ms. Black, adding that Steritech is investigating heat as a control method.

A blast of sufficient heat – about 55 degrees [editor's note: 55 C = 131 degrees F], Ms. Black estimates, applied for a matter of minutes, not hours – would kill bugs without using pesticides that can leave rooms uninhabitable for days.

A room to heat large items may be advisable, so long as it meets applicable regulations, says the bedbug-prevention design guidelines from BC Housing. Currently, there are no standard heating units on the market.

The room could help rein in the cost of bedbug control – including compensation for staff members who pick up bedbugs on the job, which can amount to $800 or more. If the room proves effective, RainCity hopes it will become a model for other housing complexes in the city.

I am curious about some of the logistics about how the room will be used in bed bug treatment.

First, the management and tenants need to know how to safely get items to the room. They need to be sealed carefully in order to prevent infesting hallways, elevators, and other apartments en route.

Furthermore, the building needs to educate tenants about avoiding bed bugs in the first place. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure, where bed bugs are concerned.

Finally, I am wondering about the logistics of decontaminating furniture while treating the apartment. Let’s say I have bed bugs in my apartment. My furniture could be removed and baked, but not all at once (the hot room is not that big). Will it then be placed somewhere else until the room is bed bug free and all the contents are as well?

It’s essential to remember that rooms, as well as furniture and other “stuff,” are infested with bed bugs. Returning uninfested items to an apartment where the structure or other remaining furniture or other items still contain bed bugs would simply mean those decontaminated items can be reinfested.

However, RainCity seems to be on top of their game, and so I assume all of this has been worked out by those doing the planning. It is a great idea to provide this kind of service, and with some forethought and education of tenants, this building is has the potential to deal with bed bugs more efficiently than many others.

I am especially excited that RainCity Housing is leading the way by being the first we know of to install a decontamination room in an apartment building. According to their website, they provide housing to people who are homeless, in transition, have mental health or drug issues, and other challenges. They believe everyone should have a home, and clearly, they believe everyone deserves a home without bed bugs. Bravo, RainCity!

As a side note, kudos are also due to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, which is taking steps to help stop the spread of bed bugs. The article reminds us that:

The agency also educates landlords, outreach workers and housing agencies about bedbug control and provides some health care workers with “bedbug kits” that include an oversized Ziploc-type bag to hold briefcases and laptops to prevent bedbugs from hitching a ride from an infested site.

These are the kinds of small steps that can make a huge difference: a little knowledge and a cheap, reclosable ziploc. How expensive or hard is that?

I hope agencies in other cities (hello, New York!) will follow suit.Similar Posts:

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Canada’s CTV reports that a BC Housing complex is infested with bed bugs. The article mentions Kuehn Tower, but the BC Housing site lists Ted Kuhn Tower I and II in Surrey, so this appears to be a typo. (Incidentally, I wonder if they found a new manager yet?)

Bill McLeod’s body is covered with bites. It’s bedbugs — and they’re crawling all over his apartment building.His home — in a B.C. Housing complex in Surrey — has been sprayed nine times to deal with a stubborn bedbug infestation. But the pests aren’t going anywhere.”I can’t sleep like this,” McLeod told CTV News. “I’m up until three in the morning. I have to leave all my lights on.

The article later claims,

B.C. Housing says it’s spent tens of thousands of dollars on pest control companies, and has a rigorous and comprehensive plan to eradicate the pests.And it’s a major problem for people in low-income housing who may have other barriers such as mental illness that make it harder for them to deal with the problems.

Mr. McLeod’s home has been treated for bed bugs nine times. Something must be going wrong then, eh? Nobody should be forced to live with this problem. Especially not folks who are older, disabled, or with other health concerns. If residents need help with prep or otherwise need support during treatment, then either social services, or BC Housing, will need to provide this assistance.Similar Posts:

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Vancouver | Homes Not Games

Originally uploaded by ardenstreet

Graffiti from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Remember VANDU? They’re the grassroots community group in Vancouver that got a grant and implemented a plan to help fight bed bugs in Vancouver’s beleaguered Downtown Eastside.

Well, they’re back at it, this time as one of the sponsors of this weekend’s Poverty Olympics (along with Raise the Rates, DTES Neighbourhood House, CCAP, BC PWA, and Streams of Justice).

And this is no joke. According to a press release, the organizers couldn’t be more serious about highlighting poverty and homelessness in the city that will roll out the red carpets for the Winter Olympics in 2010:

“When people visit Vancouver in 2010, they will be treated to eye-popping scenery, efficient services, and relaxed and friendly residents,” says Wendy Pedersen of Carnegie Community Action Project. “But they’ll also be treated to a city that could have more homeless people than athletes competing in the 2010 Games.”

“We want the world to know that Vancouver and BC have world class levels of poverty and homelessness,” says Jean Swanson of the Raise the Rates Coalition. “More than 2,000 people in our city are homeless today. Many are so poor they have to search through the garbage for food and things to sell.”

The Province online reports that volunteers are drawing attention to the problems faced by residents in the city. Organizers have come up with some appropriate mascots:

Itchy the Bedbug, Creepy the Cockroach and Chewy the Rat will be front and centre as the mascots at the Downtown Eastside’s Poverty Olympics at the Carnegie Centre on Sunday.

My money’s on itchy, if the rat doesn’t eat the other contestants. What’s in store on Sunday?

Ten torch carriers will run a two-block relay down East Hastings, said organizer Wendy Pedersen, before a five-metre-high “End Poverty Torch” is lit to mark the opening ceremonies.

Other events in the Poverty Olympics will include “the long jump over the bug-infested mattress,” “the poverty-line high jump” and the “welfare hurdles.”

“We have world-class poverty and homelessness in Vancouver” said Pedersen. “It’s a fun way to send a serious message.”

And perhaps fun is the best way to get their message across to more people.

I wish I had a photo of Itchy the Bed Bug.

View the Poverty Olympics poster (and find out how to attend!)

Read more about the Poverty Olympics here.Similar Posts:

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globeandmail.com: Tenants in ‘Pandora’s boxes’ face mountain of troubles

Article referencing 2255 Pandora Street in Vancouver, BC, where, the author claims, “Bedbugs are a given.”Similar Posts:

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