Wicked Local Cambridge (Massachusetts) reports the following in a brief recap of  last night’s Cambridge City Council meeting:

Councilors voted to look further into bedbug extermination protocol and ways make the associated costs for residents more affordable.

I had some trouble with this video of the meeting, but the relevant part is item five and begins about 2:16.

(This is a paraphrased account of what I heard): the Cambridge City Council asks the Public Health Department to work with Cambridge Housing Authority and other agencies to address the bed bug problem.

Councillor Craig Kelley speaks briefly but eloquently, suggesting the city needs a one-stop place to go to find out about bed bugs, and an education program so people will learn (for example) not to pick up discarded furniture. According to Kelley, the problem is partly one of various agencies not knowing what to do, what best practices are.

(Again, that’s a rough paraphrase of what I could catch. My computer did not like the video format.)

These are problems that sound very familiar to me and will probably sound familiar to others in New York and elsewhere.

We look forward to hearing more about Cambridge’s attempts to do more about bed bugs.

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Cambridge (UK) tenant Alison Stephenson claims her property development and management firm Places for People is not concerned about her flat’s bed bug problem.  The tenant is apparently responsible for treatment, and Stephenson seems to be happy to arrange for this. But she says other units are infested also.  And there’s nothing she can do to keep bed bugs coming back to her unit, if other flats are infested.

Cambridge News Online reports that

Ms Stephenson says that despite raising the issue with property management and development company Places for People she hasn’t received a response.

She said call handlers for the firm suggested that if left alone the bugs would go away of their own accord.

She claimed they even hinted she might have caused the outbreak herself.

Two errors there:  first, bed bugs do not go away on their own.

Second, when you assume the first person to complain about or notice bed bugs in their unit is the source of said bed bugs, it shows an ignorance of this pest and how easily it spreads.  The Bed Bug Blame Game is pointless: everyone loses.

Stephenson is getting pest control treatment from Environmental Health — that’s not the issue.

Instead, she reports she’s concerned that the building is not dealing with the spread of bed bugs within the building:

“The call handlers kept saying that it was my problem and that I would have to pay for it, and that’s fine, I am willing to pay for it despite being a single mum, but if all that happens and they just come back then what’s the point?

“I’ve heard from three other people in the block, across three different floors, who also have them and it’s made me so ill I’m not sleeping.

It’s very hard to get rid of bed bugs if all infested units are not detected and simultaneously treated.

Cambridge News online also spoke with the management company:

A spokeswoman for Places for People said: “We are aware that Ms Stephenson has a problem with bedbugs in her home.

“Though this is an issue that individual customers are responsible for, we are happy to provide advice on arranging treatment through the local environmental health department, and to assist in any way we can.

When bed bugs are present, it simply is not sufficient to look at the one unit where a problem has been reported or detected. Building management companies need to help coordinate inspections and treatment within a building. At the very least, adjacent and attached units must be inspected, if not the entire building. Other units may need treatment, especially if what Stephenson reports about her neighbors is true.

If other units are infested and are sending bed bugs over, it is immensely frustrating for tenants whether landlords pay for treatment, or — as in this case — pest control is the tenant’s responsibility. It is not enough to put out the bed bug fire in one unit.

Instead of assuming a tenant’s complaints of bed bugs in their unit is an isolated incident, management companies need to get people who are experienced in searching for bed bugs to do some investigating and actually confirm this is the case.

Consider the alternative: in most cases, if bed bugs in your building become very bad, tenants can eventually move.

Landlords are stuck with an infested building. Property managers would do well to consider this fact and take care of their investment property.

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Curbed.com, the real estate blog, claims that 30 Lincoln Plaza, currently being redeveloped into pricey condominiums (Curbed mentions a price of $1,185,000 for 647 sq/ft one bedrooms), is infested with bed bugs:

UPPER WEST SIDE—It seems there is a little detail about the condo conversion at 30 Lincoln Plaza that may have been overlooked: “You failed to mention that the building is infested with bed bugs…the management has confirmed this and is handing out pamphlets and they have even had a bedbug sniffing dog in some apartments..who knew! I would think this situation is going to really boost sales on those $1,185,000 647 sq/ft one bedrooms.” Bedbug sniffing dogs?!? Excellent. [CurbedWire Inbox]

While it’s always surprising to find out another building has bed bugs, it’s a good thing that the building management is aware and is taking action. I hope they undertake aggressive treatment throughout. (Imagine, hypothetically, the legal activity that would ensue if some units were infested but did not identify the presence of pests, were not treated, and were sold infested.)

This item from Curbed.com reminds me that a lot of the interesting bed bug “news” in the last four days has been leaked via gossip blogs: legal gossip, real estate gossip, ivy league college gossip (although this one probably had another itchy culprit).

Unlike “real” news–which is covered in the newspapers, and on TV and radio–like the spread of MRSA drug-resistant staph bacteria, which tragically killed a 7th grader in Brooklyn, bed bugs aren’t yet confirmed to cause disease and death. They have been unofficially confirmed to cause distress, stress, anxiety, sleeping trouble–and in rare cases, allergic reactions so severe they can kill. But nothing compared with the threat of deadly MRSA. I saw an ABC news segment here in NYC Friday night–kids at the school that youngster attended, were carrying bottles of purell, and startled parents and teachers were looking on in amazement as they reported washing their hands after using the lavatory (ABC7 produced multiple clips in which the students admitted this was new behavior.) The segment also featured a poster on the door of the school, and though it was not shown close-up, I am pretty certain it warned that the school had been exposed to MRSA and that people had to take precautions not to catch it.

Since bed bugs aren’t on the same level of threat, the reasoning seems to go, we don’t need to actually warn people about bed bugs in specific locations. And so “bed bug reports” are confined to the realm of gossip blogs.

Yes, it is true that hotels, real estate developers and brokers, restaurants, theaters and other businesses that are reported to have bed bugs in the mainstream media, will face worried customers and may lose business. The hotel industry in NYC, in particular, will be hard hit. One can only assume Mayor Bloomberg chooses to avoid confronting and admitting the true number of infested homes and businesses in this city (which I first considered in this post), because it would scare off tourists, who contribute so much to the city, as well as negatively affecting real estate, and maybe even how people spend their leisure time (and money).

But it does not follow that if we do not discuss bed bugs, publicly, then they will go away. The opposite is true: as long as businesses are in denial, or putting up a bed-bug-free front, the problem will keep spreading at an alarming rate, and eventually, I believe, the hit on businesses will be greater.Similar Posts:

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Ivy League gossip blog the IvyGate explained this week that the supposed scabies outbreak that forced everyone in the Pennypacker Harvard freshman dorm to be treated for scabies with a full-body pyrethrin cream application (not to mention making them all undergo the extensive laundering and calling-of-romantic-partners that condition requires), is now thought not to have been scabies at all. IvyGate shared a memo sent out to Pennypacker residents Wednesday which clarified the chain of events leading to the diagnosis and subsequent retraction:

Dear Pennypacker Resident:

After reading the Crimson opinion piece from October 22, 2007, “I’ve
Got an Itch”, it seems worthwhile to review where things stand after
the incidents of skin complaints two weekends ago at Pennypacker.

At that time, three individuals came to university health services
(UHS) with similar symptoms. After being evaluated by a physician at
After Hours Urgent Care, the possibility of scabies was considered.
Discussion with proctors at Pennypacker revealed that there were at
least 5 or 6 students at Pennypacker with itching skin and rash, though
only three of them wished to be examined.

Given the symptoms, also under consideration was the possibility of bed
bugs, though the skin findings were not classic for this diagnosis. A
scraping from the skin of one student was done to look for mites, but
these were not seen. It’s important to note the presence of mites on a
skin scraping absolutely confirms the diagnosis of scabies; if they are
absent, though, the diagnosis is not excluded. Frequently, the
diagnosis of scabies is difficult to make, and it takes several
examinations of a patient over time before other possibilities are
excluded. This is because the rash associated with scabies can be
fairly non-specific, and the “burrows” are often not seen.

But the three students’ rashes had cleared up within three days, leading an entomologist to speculate that scabies was not to blame:

Four days later, Dr. Michael Alpert, an entomologist from the Harvard School of
Public Health came to Pennypacker and talked to three symptomatic
individuals and concluded that scabies was unlikely, given the rapid
clearing. He speculated that the causative bug could have been
mosquitoes, though he never saw the bites when they were present. The
physician who did see the bites, said that the appearance of the bites
was not consistent with mosquitoes, and that their locations on the skin
was more consistent with scabies. As is frequently the case with rashes,
the simple symptoms can lead to a variety of diagnosis, and it
is often difficult to tell, in the absence of definitive testing, which
one is correct.

This memo above to students was from Doctors Sohayla Gharib and Gregory Johnson of the Harvard University Health Service, who also had this to say,

If the diagnosis was not scabies, it is
possible that there was another insect involved, though it does not
appear to be bedbugs (because there are no ongoing symptoms and there
was no evidence for bed bugs when the pest control team evaluated the
dormitory), nor appear to be mosquitoes. Whatever the ultimate source,
it is now eradicated from Pennypacker thanks to your response and
cooperation.

Let’s all hope that Pennypacker is itch-free for some time to come.

Get the full story from IvyGate.

Also, here’s a Columbia University gossip blog, BWOG (put out by writers from the student magazine) alleging bed bugs are in Schapiro 12 (student housing at Columbia University):

According to Bwog,

Now that a few students have been bitten severely, Housing has finally admitted that there are bedbugs. Two rooms have been fumigated, one of them twice. Unfortunately, Housing still refuses to clean the hallway and carpet even though bedbugs can easily travel from one room to another. Housing, you’ve really let yourself go on this one…

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