Earlier this week, there was the bed bug bill in the U.S. Congress.

And yesterday, an article in the Maine Switch (a website for those in Greater Portland) about the city’s yearly trash pick-up of bulky trash items. Not surprisingly, the day is a yearly impromptu festival for bargain hunters and curb-crawling small-time entrepreneurs:

Just like spring flowers, the sprouting of ratty recliners and beat-up toys on the sidewalk is a sign of the changing seasons in Portland. These cast-off belongings cluttering the grassy strip between the pavement and the sidewalk represent the city’s annual bulky waste pick-up. And like a siren song, yard sale buffs, bargain-hunters and freegans can’t resist this annual opportunity to turn trash into treasure.

I’ve known people who’ve practically furnished their whole apartments with curbside finds. One of the best was the gorgeous sleigh bed a friend found a few years ago. One of the worst was a couch covered in cat hair (and god know what else), which, thankfully, only made a brief appearance in another friend’s apartment.

But the main point of the article, discussed at length, is the dangers of bed bugs lurking in used items.

Oh, but beware those mattresses. Should you haul one home (like one hapless Craigslist poster did recently), you may gain some unwelcome roommates.

“If you’re picking up a mattress or other pieces of furniture, you need to be conscious that they may have bed bugs,” says Doug Gardner, Portland’s director of health and human services. “There’s no way to tell with 100% accuracy.”

That is until you install your lovely find in your home and begin to wonder why you’re suddenly covered in little red bumps.

Unfortunately, unlike Doug Gardner, the author mostly fixates on “mattresses,” whereas any used items might potentially bring bed bugs to your home. Although to her credit, the author later notes wooden furninture is also a problem, I’d stress that other items are also potentially infested. Many, many people throw out everything they own, even though it’s almost never necessary (and they’re not usually acting on the advice of bed bug experts). Throwing everything out can cost you lots of money, won’t get rid of your bed bugs, and will spread them to neighbors and others.

The article has two other Bedbugger points of interest.

First, because of bed bugs, Portland started giving their refuse collectors Tyvek suits last year for the annual bulky trash pickup day. Unfortunately, the city isn’t itself attempting to warn trash pickers about bed bugs, for example here, or here on this PDF flyer. Even a brief one-line warning would help. I understand from this article that they don’t want to seem to be condoning the practice of trash picking during the bulky trash days, but warning against it would not do so and would be germane to avoiding further spread of the problem.

Second point of interest: if you have bed bugs and rent in Portland, the article notes that your landlord does need to get rid of them. If not, you can call the city inspections department:

If apartment renters find themselves assaulted by bed bugs and can’t get their landlord to respond, [city inspections director Jeanie] Bourke’s office fields the complaints. Her team of inspectors then makes sure the landlord hires a pesticide company to spray the place down and that the residents follow a tightly regimented routine requiring the washing of everything and the sealing of clothes and mattresses in plastic.

Thanks to the Maine Switch for focusing readers’ attention on the dangers of trash picking in 2008.

• Portland’s public housing and bed bugs
• Chinches de cama en Espanol
• How to spread bed bugs, in three easy steps!
• bed bugs at Pace University; bed bug buzz in Portland, Oregon

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Given the cost and trouble involved in getting bed bugs out of a multi-unit dwelling, we hear every week from people who live in buildings where the bed bugs are not being handled well:

My bed bugs are being treated, but a neighbor has them and refuses to report them.

My bed bugs were treated, but the bugs keep coming over from neighbors.

My landlord told me I am the only one who has bed bugs. Now, I hear a neighbor had them before me. Why isn’t he warning us?

My neighbors and I are having bed bugs treated. And yesterday I saw another neighbor pull in a bedbug-labelled mattress from the trash.

These stories are really common here and on the Yahoo Bedbugger email list (see links in sidebar). You may think it’s hopeless when you’re in a building where the bugs can just keep coming. If the landlord does not get his or her act together, you may be right.

In most cities (NYC is one), tenants do have some rights. Look in your lease: it’s likely you can’t be evicted for telling a neighbor you’re being treated for bed bugs. If the landlord ever took you to court, think how the judge would receive that as a grounds for eviction.

Make sure you have read our FAQ on laws regarding tenants, landlords, and bed bugs. If it is your landlord’s responsibility to get rid of bed bugs, and s/he does not do so, you may need to work with neighbors to pressure him or her. You may need to contact city authorities, and doing so as a group, or as a bunch of individuals, might be more effective.

I also know it can be hard to deal with organizing on any level when you’re suffering from bed bugs, but doing some organizing may make it possible for you to get rid of bed bugs in the long run. You may, at the very least, get rid of them long enough to move out without taking them with you. In some heavily-infested cities, moving from an infested multi-unit to a smaller building, bedbug-free, is not a bad plan, but you can’t move with your stuff mid-infestation.

What can you do to help fight bed bugs in your building?

Educate!

Make a brief leaflet to stick discretely under neighbors’ doors. You want people to know what bed bugs are, what the signs are, how bites can look different on different people, how some people do not have itchy reactions but may have infestations all the same, how bugs can be very hard to find and catch (so spell out signs like the little black fecal specks).

Include website addresses for your city’s info on bed bugs, or that from a local university, and what your city says about landlords exterminating. Encourage people to report bed bugs to the landlord so they can get treated. If you want to organize a tenants’ group, you might include your name and apartment and phone if you want people to get in touch and are not worried about anonymity.

But, you say, “Nobugs, how can I do this? I don’t want to put my name or apartment number on this. My landlord may get angry.”

You’re right: s/he might. But you do have some rights. And if you are worried, get an email address from yahoo and enclose that, and sign “A Fellow Tenant”.

Here’s some general info. about tenant organizing from tenant.net, and more from Toronto and Boston, much of which will be of use to people elsewhere.

You might be braver if you’re sure another tenant (or more than one other) also has bed bugs. Your fellow tenants have a right to be warned, as you should have been. I’d be interested in hearing from people who took it upon themselves to notify neighbors, and also whether anyone has put together a tenants’ meeting, either building or community-wide.

Any other ideas for a FAQ on tenant organizing around bed bugs?

“Spread the word, not the bug.”

Update: 4th July, 2007:

If you want to read how one set of tenants organized, with a petition, check out this article. Very inspiring.

Reader Ben Cannon wrote in the forums that his landlord’s two PCO’s did not solve their building’s problems. And other tenants were affected. So here’s what they did:

[The Landlord] found two well known pco but they just didn’t do what we wanted. It was a difficult process to change pco and get all our neighbors to do the treatment together but here is how we did it:

(1) We first organized a private tenant (management was not invited) meeting in the lobby. We had to have two meetings (one on a weekday night and another on the weekend)
(2) We conducted a thorough survey of everyone’s experience
(3) We got EVERYONE to agree that all the apartments infested and adjacent/up & down neighboring infested apt must be treated at the same time.
(4) We then presented everyone with the new pco’s strategy and why we should change.
(4) After we all agreed, we wrote a detailed letter with everyone’s signatures expressing our concerns and desire to change pco.
(5) We presented this to the management company. The letter also included the dates that the pco and tenants agreed to do the services.

Management finally agreed because all of the difficult part were done for them. Yes, it was painful but completely worth it. Nothing in NYC is ever easy. Lesson here, unionize and work as a team and hire the right pco for the job - it makes all the difference in the world.

Bencannon

• FAQ: My landlord hired a PCO who comes twice a month, and we still have bed bugs
• Bed bugs in Ventura County (Thousand Oaks, California)
• New Britain, CT: how can building managers turn a good building bad? Ignore the bed bugs.
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.

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