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Portland State University students vs. bed bugs (and landlord)

nobugsonme — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:42:13 +0000

Portland State students living (or recently living) in off-campus rentals at the Park Plaza are battling their landlord over bed bugs. Some have sought legal advice from Student Legal and Mediation Services.

This article in the Daily Vanguard says tenants with bed bugs had their units treated individually on a case-by-case basis, and that the bed bugs kept on coming.

And several students had severe bed bug bite reactions.

“I had to go to the doctor because of an allergic reaction,” [building resident Kris Thomason] said. “The bites were swelling to the size of eggs.”

Another student who moved into the building in late October was bitten and went into anaphylactic shock—a severe reaction similar to bee sting allergies, Thomason said.

The resident couldn’t return to the building, though the apartment managers are holding her deposit and furniture until she pays to break her lease. [Attorney Lynn Clark] is working with the managers to negotiate a settlement.

This student’s out-of-pocket expenses for damages have risen to $6,000.

Thomason is stuck in the building, with an “isolated” bed until her lease expires in February.

The student who went into anaphylactic shock moved out the next day, but the apartment manager is still holding her belongings. They refuse to refund her deposit or return her things until she pays to break her lease, according to Clark.

The problem with reacting to a bed bug complaint by treating just that unit (as tenants claim is happening here) is that it will not eradicate a multi-unit or even building-wide infestation of bed bugs.

Although I do understand how expensive bed bug treatment can be for landlords, I also believe they don’t save a penny in the long run by employing scant or poor methods to treat their rental buildings.

The best way to amass huge treatment costs is to mismanage bed bug treatment, and avoid looking at the big picture, until the entire building is uninhabitable and needs treatment.

And that’s costly even if your tenants don’t have access to a student legal service, and start taking legal action to get their expenses reimbursed, on top of your eventually having to get proper and widespread bed bug treatment for that building.Similar Posts:

Bed bugs at Drew University, New Jersey

nobugsonme — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:49:08 +0000

Drew University recently alerted its students that bed bugs were found in a student’s room. The student was moved temporarily while the room was treated and furniture and mattresses were replaced.

A campus-wide e-mail was sent out on Oct. 15 letting students know that two bed bugs had been found. Student response to the e-mail was mixed.

“It’s disgusting! Bugs and I get along just fine as long as they aren’t in my bed,” Whitney McClees (‘12) said.

“They’re bugs. Unless they’re going to kill me in my sleep I don’t care,” Dana Sumner-Pritchard (‘12) said.

“It made me really glad I don’t live on campus,” commuter student Alexandra Kiely (‘12) said.

“It was kind of gross but I wasn’t really worried. That was the first I heard of it,” Arielle Sorenson (‘12) said.

“Our interest is in making sure the population [of bed bugs] doesn’t spread. We’re being overly cautious,” [Drew Chief Communications Officer Dave Muha] said about the University’s goal in dealing with the bed bugs and the reason for the campus-wide e-mail.

[Emphasis mine.]

A prompt response to a single bed bug case is a good thing.

Bed bugs did not just magically appear in this room. They were either brought in by the student, other students, or employees, or they were delivered in some manner (the old “bed bug Trojan horse”), or they walked over from another space which has a bed bug issue that is as yet undetected.

Since students are vocalizing that bed bugs are not a big deal (“Unless they’re going to kill me in my sleep I don’t care”), I hope Drew will follow up by educating students, staff, and faculty about bed bugs, how they spread, how to detect them, and why they everyone needs to be concerned about and alert for them. Similar Posts:

Colleges react to bed bugs: Loyola (Chicago), Boston University, Brigham Young (Hawaii)

nobugsonme — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:44:23 +0000

There are a lot of reports about bed bugs in colleges this week, in the wake of the recent high profile John Jay College bed bug infestation (and the less high profile Manhattan College bed bug troubles).

The Loyola Phoenix reports that Loyola University in Chicago was treating bed bugs with steam and pesticides, encasing infested mattresses, and (students claim) telling them not to talk about their infestations:

In addition to the rooms being treated, items that were on top of beds or on the floor near the beds were removed from the rooms to be cleaned. According to [Andrew Naylor, assistant director of Facilities Operations], these items were taken to a company that specializes in cleaning items that housed bedbugs or came into contact with them.

Throughout the process, residents affected by the bedbug incident were communicated with on a consistent basis, said Naylor; however, residents on other floors were not informed of the incident. “It’s certainly not like we’re trying to keep a secret. We just didn’t feel it was necessary to alarm the whole building,” said Naylor.

[Juniors Mike Fernandez and Eric Finnegan] said they were informed to not talk about the incident. “They told us ‘don’t say anything,’ because they didn’t want to start a mass panic and have all the students worry, which is understandable until they got the problem under control,” Fernandez said.

[Emphasis mine.]

Ke Alaka’i reports that Brigham Young University in Hawaii is giving dorm RAs Steri-Fab for treating bed bugs and eggs; Ke Alaka’i says

Bedbugs live in both the seams of and in the crisscross stitching of mattresses. They are visible by pulling down on the edge of the cording.

However, as we understand it, Steri-Fab is not recommended as a sole treatment option (Dr. Michael Potter found Steri-Fab had a “very low egg mortality”) , and bed bugs can live anywhere in a room, not just on the seams of mattresses.

The most encouraging story this week comes from Boston University, where the Daily Free Press reports that housing officials proactively searched on-campus housing for bed bugs in August.

Boston University housing officials have identified the bedbug infestation in dormitories such as Student Village and Myles-Standish Hall as a serious concern within the last year.

The infestations don’t just occur in older dormitories — they can show up in any building, new or old. There were five StuVi1 apartments infested with bedbugs at the start of the academic year, Director of Housing Marc Robillard said.

“Bedbugs travel with people. It has nothing to do with hygiene,” he said. “Some of the nicest hotels in the world have bedbugs because of the transition of people coming into their properties.”

In August, housing officials checked each of the larger residences for bedbugs after the dorms housed different groups during the summer, Robillard said. Housing officials said they are currently unaware of any active cases on campus.

Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences graduate student Emily Wilkinson said she found out her four-bedroom StuVi apartment, which she shared with roommates last year, was one of the five infested.

“I guess they found the bedbugs when they were doing an inspection so they didn’t want to put us [in our apartment],” she said. “They moved us into StuVi 2 and told us it would take two weeks for the whole process to happen. It took more than three, which was annoying.”

[Emphasis mine.]

There’s no guarantee that bed bugs can be eliminated in two or three weeks, and it would be interesting to know how the college performs these proactive bed bug inspections and how it signs off on housing units as being bed bug-free after bed bug treatment.

However, it is a good idea for colleges to have residences proactively inspected for bed bugs; remember, not everyone reacts to bed bug bites, and it can take some time before one sees obvious signs of a bed bug infestation.Similar Posts:

Manhattan College students report bed bugs in Overlook Manor off-campus housing

nobugsonme — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:50:53 +0000

Manhattan College students claim their off-campus apartments have bed bugs, and that the situation is not being managed well.

Here’s the video of Fox5’s story on the situation at Overlook Manor, at 238th and Waldo Ave. in Riverdale.

It’s important to note the inaccuracies here: the students are speaking as if rooms where students have not noticed bed bug bites are necessarily bed bug-free; this is not so. You can have bed bugs and not have visible bite marks or an itchy skin problem.

It also is not true that a medical professional can examine bite marks and claim with any certainty that they came from bed bug bites. We hear a skin biopsy can confirm the bites came from an insect, but cannot determine which insect was the cause; visual inspections of bites cannot confirm bed bugs as a source.

Nevertheless, if some people in a building have bed bugs, it is definitely likely that others in the building experiencing new itchy skin conditions may have them as well.

Read the full article here.Similar Posts:

University of Manitoba student rooms infested with bed bugs

nobugsonme — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:41:12 +0000

Several dorm rooms at the University of Manitoba are infested with bed bugs; they’re undergoing treatment, and residents have been relocated to temporary accommodation.

While university officials here are “taking the issue very seriously,” according to CBC, they’re also assuring the media that bed bugs are “not a health risk” (as officials almost always do).

But universities should take note: bed bugs are stressful. They cause anxiety and make people lose a lot of sleep. Bed bug bites can cause intense itching and sometimes more serious allergic reactions. They can make people miserable.

Magali Leveille told CBC News, bed bugs made her want to drop out of her program at the university:

Leveille moved to Winnipeg from Montreal to brush up on her English through a program at the university that includes accommodations at the campus. The program brings in students from Canada and abroad that want to improve their English language skills.

Some say the bed bug experience has ruined the program.

“With me, I just want to go home, and I’m just upset about that, and it’s enough,” said Leveille. “The bed bugs, it’s really not funny, and I don’t want to be in the program anymore.”

[Emphasis added.]

Note: we have heard from many students dealing with bed bugs on the Bedbugger Forums.

And infested dorms are often the best case scenario; students living in private rented accommodations often have less hope of seeing the problem sorted out; they are often new to the world of rented apartments, don’t know where to turn for advice, and usually receive no assistance from their colleges in dealing with deadbeat landlords.

Some are thinking of dropping out of their programs. Some are failing exams. Some are suffering from extreme anxiety and depression.

If that doesn’t ring parents’ and university administrators’ warning bells about bed bugs, I am not sure what will.

See the full article here: University of Manitoba residence fumigated for bed bugs.Similar Posts:

Bed bugs found in San Diego State University library: second instance of infested chairs on campus

nobugsonme — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:50:31 +0000

According to independent student newspaper, The Daily Aztec, twenty-seven “comfy” chairs were recently removed from the lower level of the San Diego State University library after bed bugs were found there.

Bedbugs are back with a recent infestation in the library, specifically in the “comfy” chairs on the lower level of the Dome.

“Twenty-seven chairs from the lower level of the dome were removed,” Mark Lester, director, Access, Administrative Operations and Communication of Library and Information Access, said. “We resolved the problem in the best way we could think of.”

This article from the university’s independent student newspaper notes that bed bugs were found in SDSU dorms earlier this semester.

And we also reported back in January that, again according to the Daily Aztec, bed bugs had been found in the “egg chairs” in the Counseling and Psychological Services Office at San Diego State.

Since bed bugs do hitchhike on clothing and in people’s bags, these should not be assumed to be unrelated incidents. Bed bugs in chairs in multiple buildings around campus should be taken very seriously.

A campus that is seeing bed bug infestations in chairs around the campus should be taking a very proactive role in detecting bed bugs and treating them properly — both in student housing and in other facilities. If they are in the counseling office waiting room and the library, they could be anywhere.

Check out: The Daily Aztec – Bedbugs found in library.Similar Posts:

Apartment building offers bed bug-free guarantee

nobugsonme — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:45:37 +0000

Studio Green, a privatized student housing option for students at the University of Delaware, has previously had problems with bed bugs.

According to the University of Delaware’s independent student paper, The Review, Studio Green is willing to offer students a guarantee that they won’t have to deal with bed bugs or cockroaches:

The management of Studio Green apartments issued a pest-free apartment guarantee for new and current residents Wednesday. Jim Short, president of Campus Living Villages, Studio Green’s parent company, said he issued the new policy partly in response to a March 24 article in The Review that reported bed bug and cockroach problems. Efforts on behalf of management are met with mixed reviews by tenants.

Short issued a statement on correcting pest problems.

“Because we are so confident that we have the bug problems under control at Studio Green, we have decided to issue a bug infestation-free guarantee,” Short said in the statement. “If any new or current resident experiences a bed bug or cockroach infestation at Studio Green, the resident will have the option of relocating to another apartment in our community, at our cost, or canceling their lease.”

He said this option will be available after the infestation is confirmed and management has tried to eradicate the bugs. Management will have one week to solve cockroach infestations and two weeks to eliminate bed bugs before tenants can relocate within the complex or cancel their leases.

“We are making this guarantee so that our residents can be assured that they will never have an ongoing problem with infestations of this type,” Short said.

Promising to eliminate bed bugs in two weeks — once they’re discovered — is a pretty big promise, considering bed bugs can be hard to detect, and may be pretty seriously established before student residents even notice them. And once established, bed bugs can be hard to get rid of.

The building management should consider implementing routine inspections, perhaps by skilled bed bug sniffing dog teams.

Studio Green is managed by Campus Living Villages, which operates private student housing at 47 universities in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.Similar Posts:

Bed bugs at Northern Kentucky University

nobugsonme — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:15:00 +0000

Northern Kentucky University is suffering from the bed bug scourge, independent student paper The Northerner reports today:

Director of University Housing Peter Trentacoste said, “I can confirm we had a (bed bugs) incident. We successfully treated the six rooms.”

It appears they took swift action and ordered a thermal treatment for six infested rooms in Callahan Hall.

I was a tad concerned about how the university determined which units were infested, however:

When University Housing discovered a possibility of bed bugs, it began calling every resident on the infested floor to ascertain which rooms were affected. Students were relocated to begin extermination last weekend.

I am not sure what questions can be asked of students to determine whether they had bed bugs.

I hope the housing administrators understand that bed bugs and their signs can be hard to see, especially in newer infestations, and that entomologists estimate that 50 to 70% of people do not react to bed bug bites.

In other words, students could have bed bugs biting them, and have absolutely no idea. And it’s essential to detect and treat all infested units if you want to get rid of bed bugs in a building.

It does sound like precautions were taken when students were relocated. This is crucial, to avoid spreading the problem.

via The Northerner – Crawling on campus.Similar Posts:

George Washington University has treated 60 student rooms for bed bugs since Fall semester

nobugsonme — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:16:32 +0000

Back in September, the George Washington University student paper, The GW Hatchet, reported that one student was known to have received bed bug bites at a pre-semester off-campus retreat. A dozen more, an administrator noted, might have been exposed to bed bugs.

Those were engineering students, whose dorm was treated for bed bugs in the Fall.

This week, a new article from the Hatchet reports that since the Fall 2009 semester began, twelve dorm rooms have been confirmed to have bed bugs and sixty rooms in multiple dorms have been treated for bed bugs.

The Hatchet notes,

The inspection and eradication process conducted by the University’s Residential Property Management requires that students living in possibly infested rooms move all of their belongings to the center of the room, vacate the room for four hours and wash all bedding and clothing.

Students affected by the decontamination efforts receive $10 to $20 on their GWorld cards as reimbursement for the cost of laundry and trash bags to store their belongings – a response many of the affected students interviewed said they found unsatisfactory.

It is not clear what sort of bed bug treatment is performed, or whether follow-up treatments occur.

It also is not clear whether non-washable belongings are bagged during treatment.

Colleges struggling with bed bugs would do well to consider some of the bed bug detection and treatment procedures which are being employed at other colleges, including searches by bed bug sniffing dogs, heat treatment of belongings, and — perhaps most crucial — educating students and staff about bed bugs, how to detect their presence, and what to do if bed bugs are suspected.
Similar Posts:

Yale Daily News – Bedbugs make an unwelcome appearance in Lanman-Wright dorm

nobugsonme — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:09:25 +0000

The Yale Daily News reports bed bugs have recently been found (and apparently successfully treated) in an Old Campus student room.

Around Valentine’s Day weekend, a student in Lanman-Wright Hall had a visitor in her bed.

The freshman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she initially thought she was having an allergic reaction. The red blotches on her body — on every surface of her skin that was not covered by pajamas — were a reaction to another culprit: bedbugs.

“I found a friend on my pillow,” she said of the bedbug, which, she recalled, was the size of her pinky nail.

Although the L-Dub bedbug was a seemingly isolated incident, in the month after it was discovered a group of administrators gathered to discuss the problem of bedbugs, Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske ’74 said. Old Campus residents were informed of the incident at the beginning of March.

The University decided to re-inspect the affected suite and its neighboring room during spring break, even though the rooms were treated for bedbugs within two days of finding the pest in February. No other bedbugs were subsequently found.

One of the students in a neighboring suite said she was surprised to hear about the microscopic guest across the hall.

“I thought it was something that only existed in nursery rhymes,” she said.

via Yale Daily News – Bedbugs make an unwelcome appearance in Lanman-Wright.

Every student in every college should be educated about bed bugs — no one should think that bed bugs only exist in nursery rhymes.

Some colleges have used educational campaigns to help students learn about this problem, a good preventive measure. Stanford has a PDF about bed bugs on their website, though it is not easy to find by searching.Similar Posts: