Want to move out of your bed bug-infested apartment and avoid the hassle of destroying and tossing out your infested furniture and other items, including a futon and a captain’s bed, and stuffed animals?

Want to expose lots of people and their neighbors, co-workers, relatives and friends to bed bugs?

Great!

Here’s what you do:

1. Place ad on Craigslist offering nearly all of your possessions for free.

I apologize if this is a duplicate. I thought I posted it but now I can’t find it, so I’m trying again

FREE STUFF!!!!!! I am moving Saturday morning, so everything needs to go ASAP. Please email me to arrange for pickup. This list is *NOT* inclusive. As I pack, more stuff is being added…

2. Include detailed list of items available and warnings that the items have been exposed to bed bugs in your infested home.

I have to start with the warning: the home these items come from have bedbugs. HOWEVER, many of these items were from rooms where I never saw any evidence of bugs or will be easily cleaned. I just don’t have the time to do it myself!

3. Wipe your hands clean and don’t think twice about the carnage which will most surely follow.

Yes, sure, you gave the warnings, so you’re ethically absolved of all responsibility. Have a nice day!

The truth is, everyday people take bed bug infested stuff off the curb which has warnings attached. People can be idiots.

So if you don’t destroy or debug your stuff, you are spreading bed bugs.

You’re spreading the itchiness and discomfort of bed bug bites, the cost of pest control and replacing possessions, the many hours of sleep, and hours and hours of work. You’ll likely cause others to have to move too, at great expense of time and money.

Don’t kid yourself that the warnings you gave will prevent others from suffering. If you have bed bugs in your home, people could pick them up and take them home just by coming over to get something of yours, let alone taking it in their car or into their home.

Thanks to Aly of A Little Aly-tude for the find, for warning her public, (and for the shout out!)

If ad has been removed, see screenshot here.

• Another Craigslist bed bug story
• killing bed bugs with commodity fumigation: coming soon to your town, we hope?
• FAQ: dry cleaners and bed bugs
• Frankfort, Kentucky Public Housing Authority plays the “bed bug blame game”

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311 posting NYC

Originally uploaded by Beauty Playin ‘Eh

According to NYC HPD data obtained by New York vs. Bed Bugs, there were 8,840 complaints and 2,757 violations in fiscal year 2008, as of June 19, 2008. (That means 8,840 people called 311, and of those whose homes were inspected, 2,757 cases were cited as bed bug violations.)

Still, those numbers, as alarming as they may be, are relatively low.

Homeowners never call 311 to report bed bugs. And most tenants don’t call 311 about bed bugs, unless their landlord is such a deadbeat that fuggeddabout calling a bed bug specialist, s/he won’t even call the building’s once-a-month roach-spray guy and have him do a little spray and pray.

And few people call their city council members about bed bugs, though I seriously think we all should, now that we know they’re actually keeping track of the calls.

I have often cited the incidence of New York City residents visiting the Bedbugger forums and complaining of bed bugs — compared with the extremely small number who tell us they called 311 to file a bed bug complaint — as anecdotal evidence of how much bigger the bed bug problem is in this city than the city’s limited data shows it to be.

And the anecdotal evidence keeps coming from elsewhere too.

Yesterday, Aly Walansky, of the SheKnows A Little Aly-tude blog, blogged about a string of bed bug infestations among her New York City friends and acquaintances:

. . . today I got an email from one of my closest friends…she is actually a friend I almost moved in with last year, and she recently moved to studio in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. Apparently, last night she discovered that her neighbors had bed bugs…and today, she discovered she did, as well.

Sadly, this isn’t even her first time dealing with them. Last year, she had a ferocious experience coping with said vermin at a boyfriend’s home. Matters were made worse when she escaped home to her parents, and discovered some had followed her there.

At the time though, we had chalked it up to the freaky Queens infestation crisis.

My friend persevered, spent a fortune on decor for her new home…and now is dealing with it again. She’s understandably hysterical.

But Aly’s story does not end there.

Not an hour later, I was telling my BFF what the morning’s events had uncovered, and she shared horrible news. (No, she does not have them.) However, one of her good friends does too! Then, I get to the office I am at today, and overhear another person chatting…you guessed it.

So Aly’s friend has had them twice, the friend’s neighbors have them, the friend’s boyfriend and parents had them the last time the friend was infested. Aly’s friend-of-another-friend also currently has them, as does someone at Aly’s workplace.

You might wonder if Aly has a fairly large social circle, but really, if New York has over 8 million residents, and only 2,757 people were known by HPD to have had bed bugs in FY2008 — why that’s about 0.003% of the population! The odds of a single individual knowing such a disproportionate number of bed bug sufferers are quite astronomical.

That is, if the HPD data comes anywhere near approaching the actual incidence of bed bug infestations in New York City.

I think it’s safe to say most people also don’t yet report their infested addresses on the Bed Bug Registry.

So, perusing the 311 stats yet again, I got to thinking: how many different people from New York City came to Bedbugger.com last month?

Without going into too much detail,* I’d estimate, based on Google Analytics data, that at least 9553 different New York City residents visited this site in the month spanning June 14th to July 14th. These are what Google calls “Absolute Unique Visitors,” not folks coming back again and again (as many readers in the throes of a bed bug infestation do).

I think it’s safe to say that many of these are just bed bug-curious. (May they remain only curious.)

Some may be having a bed bug scare. (May it remain just a scare.)

But I think it’s highly likely that a good chunk of the 9,553 are either in the throes of a full-on bed bug encounter, or have reason to think they have been exposed to bed bugs, or have seen an unidentified insect and/or felt unexplained itching or have apparent bite marks, and suspect these are bed bug bites.

I can’t make any claims as to what percentage of Bedbugger readers fall into the “bed bug-curious,” “having a scare,” “suspected or known bed bug exposure” or “full-on bed bug infestation” categories.

However, for what it’s worth, I do note that more NYC residents paid a visit to Bedbugger in the last 31 days than called 311 to report bed bugs in the entire fiscal year 2008 so far (as of June 19th).

They’re not here for the witty repartee, fashion advice, or gossip. Something is making them spend their precious leisure time reading about a blood-sucking insect.

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*Detail, for those who enjoy it: Google Analytics separates NYC into the four normal boroughs and then every “city” in Queens, making this hard to tot up, so I am counting only cities in Queens with more than 9 visitors. In other words, this is a very conservative estimate. I also don’t get data on unique site visits based on geography, so I’ve used the percentage of unique site visits for the site as a whole and adjusted the NYC visitors based on that.

• How bad are bed bugs in Toronto? Nobody knows for sure.
• Washington Post prints correction thanks to bed bug activist
• bed bugs: incidence studies needed in NYC and elsewhere
• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities

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The first seminar is scheduled to take place on Monday, January 28 from 6PM to 8PM at the Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion, 1^st floor conference room, Columbia University Medical Center, 1150 St. Nicholas Avenue (at 168^th Street) in Manhattan.

The second seminar is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, February 5 from 8PM to 9PM at Ricardo’s Catering Hall, 21-01 24^th Avenue in Astoria, Queens.

The final seminar is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, March 12 from 6PM to 8PM at the Hope Gardens Senior Center, 195 Linden Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Anyone interested in attending any of these seminars is encouraged to call (212) 863-8830 to reserve a space. Translation services will be provided for Spanish-speaking members of the public.

New York Times blogger Jennifer 8. Lee also reported on the seminars. She also gave a helpful insight into what happens after you call 311:

Bedbug complaints are listed as an “emergency,” which means they go to the top of the priority list. The department sends out inspectors at night, when bedbugs tend to be more active. Typically, bedbugs are listed as a Class B violation, which gives the owner 30 days to correct the problem. The least severe violations, Class A, have to be fixed within 90 days. Class C violations, for emergency conditions like no electricity or hot water, must be corrected within 24 hours and completely dwarf the bedbug complaints.

Although we knew something about what happens when bedbuggers call 311, we had not previously heard that inspections were made at night. (I’m not sure how big a help this is, since I assume inspectors aren’t coming to call at 2 am, but still, it can’t hurt.) Lee also provided an interesting quotation from a City Councilperson who had had bed bugs:

Robert Jackson, a city councilman who represents parts of northern Manhattan, said at a news conference that his family had been plagued by bedbugs when he was young.

“They used to bite us all,” he said.”We used to wake up trying to kill them at night.”

Incidentally, Jackson was born and raised in Manhattan, according to the City Council’s biography, linked from his name above. I suspect someone in the New York City Council will soon have a contemporary story of bed bugs. I hope that when they do, they will speak out.

Lee continued,

Awareness has made people paranoid of bedbugs, which is why calls to 311 have skyrocketed, though only a part of those have ended up with violation notices.

“I think a lot of people are convinced they have bedbugs when they don’t,” Mr. Aragon said.

That is another reason they are holding the seminars, he said, so that people with skin rashes know when not to call 311.

This is certainly important– people should not panic, and should rule out other causes of itching. Knowing what different stages of bed bugs look like is key.

However, I have to admit that– having heard some 311 stories myself, and knowing how difficult it can be to find bed bug samples– I would suspect at least some of the 5000 people who called 311 last year and who were told they did not have bed bugs, did have them. Although some of the 7000 calls were doubtless panic reactions, I would not be surprised if more than 2000 were actual bed bug cases. I would like to know what constitutes evidence of bed bugs for the inspectors, and how they are trained to detect infestations. We’re told some PCOs do not visually inspect for bed bugs, finding this too difficult, time-consuming, or pointless.

Hopefully anyone who did have bed bugs, but whose HPD inspection turned up nothing, eventually found evidence and called again. However, we know that when people call for help and don’t get it, they often try other means the next time–like paying for their own treatment, or self-treating. (If neighbors are infested, both methods can fail miserably.)

The Times Ledger community newspapers also reported this week on the planned seminars.

The meetings, one of which will take place on Feb. 5 in Astoria, are a response to the rise in complaints that city residents have filed against the insects, according to City Council Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria).

“It’s a problem that until recently even I wasn’t aware of. You expect something like this in a third world country but not in the capital of the world,” he said.

They cited incorrect statistics on the number of complaints citywide:

In 2005, there were only 62 bedbug complaints, which soared to 366 last year, according to the city. Astoria had the third highest number of complaints, Vallone said. Although bedbugs do not transmit any diseases, they are still pose a health crisis for city residents according to the councilman.

“Other cities don’t consider bed bugs a crisis but when people aren’t sleeping they can develop physical and mental problems,” he said.

Perhaps the paper meant to cite statistics for Astoria? The city reported much higher numbers of complaints in 2007 city-wide. The press release about the seminars says,

In Fiscal Year 2007 alone, the City’s 311 hotline received nearly 7,000 bedbug related complaints and HPD housing inspectors issued over 2,000 violations to building owners all across the City. By comparison, Fiscal Year 2004 saw only 1,800 complaints and less than 400 violations issued.

We should remember these are only the people who called 311 to complain about bed bugs, which it appears most tenants and no coop or condo owners do. The numbers also leave out the NYC housing authority residents who had bed bugs last year. Douglas Feiden’s December report in The Daily News reported that there were

… 1,708 verified bedbug cases in 277 public housing projects this year [2007], the city Housing Authority says.

The city and the media leave us to do the math: New York City knows of approximately 3700 tenants who had bed bugs last year. They have no data on non-NYCHA tenants who reported bed bugs to their landlords directly, nor those who called pest control operators themselves, nor on co-op, condo or other homeowners.

From where I sit, hearing the stories of New York bedbuggers daily–and knowing only a small percentage call 311 about their bed bug problem–this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Vallone is also wrong that other cities don’t consider bed bugs a crisis. Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, and San Francisco, California, are all US cities that are taking bed bugs seriously. Though responses have been limited so far, some of these cities have expended more money and energy per capita on bed bugs than New York has, by far.

And outside the US, Vancouver is also taking bed bugs seriously with a number of responses. Toronto is currently figuring out what to do.

Also this week, the New York Press blogged about the bed bug “education campaign”, and used one of Bedbugger mangy_cur’s excellent bed bug photos. Congratulations, mangy_cur!

They also linked to a thread in our forums, which we do appreciate (thanks, Emily Meredith of nypress.com!) though it’s always a little embarrassing when people arrive first via a forums thread, like a new guest coming to visit for the first time off the fire escape and through the kitchen window. But we welcome them nonetheless.

Update 1/21: CBS on the bed bug seminars; includes interview with Lou Sorkin who stresses that people need to look for the tiny, translucent nymphs which will be more common than rust-colored adults.

• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Tomorrow’s bed bug seminar in New York (Tuesday 2/5/2008)
• Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington in NYC: latest bed bug lawsuit
• Columbia Spectator on bed bugs, again with the HPD statistic soup

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Real Estate blog Curbed has done a bit of cybersleuthing and found the location of the Maya Rudolph / Paul Anderson SOHO loft (they recently fled its bed bugs). It turns out the loft is back on the sales and rental market, and the rental price has gone up from $13,500 to $16,000. I guess the presence of some bed bug nymphs and instars (which we all know are probably still there, since it takes a lot of exterminating, of an entire building, to get rid of them) actually adds value to an apartment.  When broker Halsted says “pets allowed”, you assume they aren’t included.

• recent bites from bed bugs (photo)
• Bed bugs in Time Out New York’s Apartment issue
• Presidential Towers sold, with free bed bugs! Doctors and bedbugs (again)
• World exclusive: Bedbuggers experiment with being bitten, on purpose!

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