Denver’s Environmental Health Department says they have had complaints about bugs there for more than two years.

The property is owned by Shockor Management and is telling tenants they will spray once again this week. But the bugs don’t seem to be going away.

That has prompted many to move out, leaving many of their couches and bedding in the garbage.

Former tenant Jackie Howe moved in two months ago not knowing there was an ongoing bed bug problem. She’s now had to flee.

Renting units in bed bug infested buildings without notifying prospective tenants should be illegal.

The City says they know about the history of complaints and says that every time the owners are citied (sic), they comply and spray as they will again this week.

What is unanswered is why the spraying isn’t killing the bed bugs.

It isn’t clear what kind of bed bug treatment follows these citations, however, if treatments are not aggressive enough (approximately every two weeks, in every unit with bed bugs, until every last bed bug is gone) it would begin to explain why bed bug problems persist.

Tenants discarding possessions as they flee the building, some of which are surely being reclaimed by other tenants, are probably another contributing factor.

While pesticide resistance may be a factor, these other two considerations are even more obvious problems, and should not be discounted.

I hope Denver’s Environmental Health Department will work on more comprehensive solutions to fighting bed bugs in Denver (which we know are not just a problem in this one building). They should consider what actions are required by landlords and tenants once infestations are detected, ways of collecting bed bug-infested refuse to keep it from infesting other homes, and a public education campaign to help educate all of Denver on how to recognize, avoid, and fight bed bugs (once detected).

The same types of considerations should be undertaken by cities and counties and other authorities elsewhere.

Ordering landlords to treat once bed bugs are detected is too vague and simply not enough to get rid of bed bugs permanently.

• Toronto tenants camping outside to avoid bed bugs: update
• Denver’s elderly, disabled, fight bed bug Shaq attack
• Bowling Green Towers: residents organize to demand proper bed bug treatment in low-income building
• Bed bugs in Ventura County (Thousand Oaks, California)

ShareThis

Ivan Moreno reports for the Rocky Mountain News that the court date finally arrived; the owners sent an attorney to represent them (they’re in Maine), and they were fined $41 for “failing to spray for bed bugs”. That wasn’t the only thing wrong with the building–remember this is the one where disabled people are trapped at home because the elevator doesn’t work. And there are other problems.

Although fines for these violations “rarely exceed $1000,” the $41 still seems minuscule compared with the hardships tenants must be enduring. Management said they stopped paying for treatment because the owners did not give them money. Previous articles said there had been bed bugs in the building for 16 months.

Adding insult to injury, the owners say they’ll be upping the rent in September, to pay for maintenance.

Since 70% of the rent is subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, it seems like the government is also responsible. You can’t have an affordable housing building infested, and you can’t expect tenants on fixed incomes to pay more rent.

It’s not just private business people who are dropping the ball on this one, folks. It’s our government too.

Now what are we going to do about it?

• More on Denver’s Halcyon House and bed bugs
• More bed bugs in Nashua, NH: rooming-house tenant goes to court
• Windsor, Ontario: bed bugs in public housing
• Denver’s elderly, disabled, fight bed bug Shaq attack

ShareThis

Rocky Mountain News Service has an article today by a journalist whose friend Steve is a quadriplegic living in Halcyon House, with bed bugs. It may be the worst thing I’ve read about bed bugs, period. The building has all kinds of other problems, which are horrific in themselves, but the bed bug problem is a particularly sinister one for the mostly disabled and elderly population housed there. And an alleged $15,000 of PCO treatments per month wasn’t cutting it.

The journalist, Tina Griego, describes paying her friend a visit after seeing the article the other day.

We find Steve in his usual spot, in bed. Hey, Dave says, scanning a note from management, you can’t use the emergency doors to get in and out of the building anymore.

I’ll make a note of that, Steve says. He’s paralyzed from the neck down, can’t feel a thing from his Adam’s apple south. Quadzilla, he calls himself. He turns on the lights, the fan, the television and stereo with a plastic straw. Puff or sip. With his breath, he controls his environment.

During the day, he has home health care aides. At night, he is alone. He was helpless when bedbugs infesting his building found his bed. He felt them crawling in his hair, on his neck, his face. He lay there and the bugs bit. It was like being stuck with pins, he says.

“I was scared,” he tells me and Dave. “I wanted a blowtorch. I wanted to die.”

It went on, some months worse than others, for a year and a half.

When you first encounter this story, you think, “Shame on the landlords!” as I did.

Maybe you read the story Dave was talking about. Halcyon House management was cited for failing to maintain pest control. The building has had bedbugs for years. The company, Urban Inc., said the owners, Maine- based American Housing Preservation Corp., ran into a cash shortage. The hearing was reset for next week so the owner’s lawyers could attend.

It’s the kind of story that had me wishing a judge would order the owners to live in the apartments themselves.

But as the discussion of the last post on Bedbugger about this issue suggests, getting rid of bed bugs in a high-rise takes a certain level of involvement–time, physical effort, and money–that these tenants may be unable to provide. Many younger people not dealing with physical conditions, and with more funds, are unwilling or unable to participate to the required level. Just imagine how much harder it is in this situation.

Urban’s managing director, Mark Shulman, acknowledges the Halcyon has problems and says the owners are working on them. He says the building “has faced some pretty serious financial needs” in the last two years and pest control ran the owners $15,000 a month. The owner cannot easily raise rents to cover rising costs because the building is taxpayer-subsidized.

Spraying resumed in mid-May on a twice-weekly schedule after nearly a month’s hiatus. Shulman says the owners also have been negotiating a rent increase with government agencies for more security. “We will have uniformed personnel in the building 2 4/7,” he says.

At the Colorado Housing and Financing Authority, spokesperson Kristine McLain also acknowledges “ongoing concerns” with the Halcyon and says her agency is working with the owners. “In a perfect world, you close down the building,” she says, “but . . .

We finish the sentence at the same time: “. . . where would the tenants go?”

Dave and I visited Steve on Tuesday, a spraying day. He didn’t answer his intercom to buzz us in, so we walked in the way most people do, slipping past a departing tenant. The lobby was empty save for a resident who shot us a disapproving look. We signed in on a clipboard outside the closed office.

Steve was in good spirits. Someone sprayed his room a few weeks ago, and it’s made a difference. He’s also regularly dousing his bed, which has a vinyl mattress, with Real-kill bug killer.

“The whole thing took a lot out of me,” he said. “But I consider myself one of the lucky ones in the building. Some people here can’t communicate at all. Think about them.”

He told us to make sure and check our clothes after we left. “Bedbugs like to burrow in fabric.”

That night, I imagined I felt bugs in my hair. My arms itched. I thought a lot about Steve.

I am still angry at the landlords. But I also think the government should be stepping in. Someone has to do something. This is such a shameful situation–and I am talking about only the bed bugs, but all the other hazards to their physical safety that these tenants are having to put up with. Doesn’t anyone enforce housing codes? Not having working elevators in this place is a serious safety violation, since people can’t get out in an emergency.

• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House
• Bed bugs on the rise in Detroit
• 25 Grant Street in Denver, Colorado: bed bugs for two years
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs

ShareThis

Elderly, disabled fight filth, bedbugs

Court case drags on as residents cope with filthy building

By Ivan Moreno, Rocky Mountain News
June 15, 2007

“This is never going to end,” Kevin Grimsinger said as he exited a Denver courtroom in his wheelchair Thursday.

The 39-year-old, who lost his legs to a land mine while serving in the U.S. Army in Kosovo, and his fellow residents at a downtown affordable housing building have wrangled with corporations as their rooms became infested with bedbugs and trash collection was interrupted because contractors weren’t paid.

For almost a year, the elderly and disabled residents of Halcyon House have been left wondering who is responsible - Urban Inc., the Greenwood Village management company, or American Housing Preservation Corp., the Maine-based company that owns the building at 1955 Arapahoe St.

They were hoping for some answers Thursday when the manager of Urban Inc. appeared in court after being cited by the city for lack of pest control. But the case was continued until June 28, so an attorney representing the building’s owner can be present.

“It’s just like a continuous running circle,” said Grimsinger as he maneuvered his wheelchair down a narrow hallway of Denver Environmental Court.

In the meantime, the Denver Department of Environmental Health may issue additional citations to Halcyon House’s owners for unsanitary conditions, said Bob McDonald, division supervisor for Public Health Inspection.

Actually, it’s been 16 months so far (read on). And here we see another variation on the blame game: this time the question of who pays for treatment. It sounds like this kept things tied up while bed bugs bred and the problem spread.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which subsidizes 70 percent of the residents’ rent, knows about the bedbug problem, said Marcie LaPorte, director of the Denver Multifamily Hub.

“A worse-case scenario would be to not pay the subsidy part of the rent, but we would like to do everything we can before it gets to that point,” LaPorte said.

Cutting off the subsidy would only worsen the situation because there would be less money for the upkeep of the building, said Cris White, chief operating officer at the Colorado Housing and Financing Authority, which ensures residents qualify for the assistance.

Mark Shulman, managing director of Urban Inc., said the “challenges at the Halcyon House are many.”

Chief among them is the widespread bedbug infestation, which prompted the city to take the matter to court.

“There was simply no funds for which to pay” the pest-control company, Shulman said. The company that owns the building stopped providing the money in late April, he added.

American Housing Protection Corp. did not a return a call for comment Thursday.

Denver Environmental Health officials said Urban Inc. resumed pest-control operations after they were cited May 14. But since bedbugs can never be completely eradicated, the spraying has to continue indefinitely to keep them under control.

Grimsinger said if things don’t improve, residents will picket in front of their building.

“We deserve the same treatment as anybody else in this city,” he said.

To say that “since bedbugs can never be completely eradicated, the spraying has to continue indefinitely to keep them under control” is not accurate in itself. Bed bugs can be eliminated from an entire building. To do so using routine sprayings is very difficult. It may have been possible to eradicate them using traditional methods (sprays and dusts) if the PCO had known what they were doing and treated aggressively enough and regularly enough and had the residents been educated about the process and the do’s and don’ts. At this point, the building may need to be treated with Vikane gas (if this is legal in Denver). If Vikane is not legal there, perhaps thermal treatment is possible.

To make matters more interesting, here’s a tidbit the article leaves out. Back in August, the Denver Post reported that this affordable housing building is owned by a group of investors (American Housing Preservation Corp) that includes Shaquille O’Neal.

In August 2006, the Denver Post also said:

Eric Pusch, a resident who uses a wheelchair, said it is “such a tragedy to wake up in the middle of the night and briefly turn on my television and, from the light of the television, I can see the bugs swarming all over the pillow next to me. I might reach over and try to brush them off or smash them, and a blood spot is left.”

Ellen Dumm, spokeswoman for the city’s department of environmental health, called the company cooperative and said the owner has been using an extermination company to get rid of the bugs.

Mark Shulman of the Greenwood Village-based property-management company Urban Inc. said the level of treatment the company has been maintaining is “status quo,” but it became apparent last week that it needed to eradicate the bugs and move to another level of treatment.

Shulman said the owners are pursuing an aggressive treatment proposal, going apartment by apartment this week, evacuating and treating entire floors.

“We recognize the problem,” Shulman said.

Efforts to reach O’Neal through his agent or the Miami Heat basketball team were not successful.

Either the problem was “recognized” too late, or the treatment was not aggressive enough. For whatever reasons, all in all, these people have had bed bugs since February 2006 (16 months), and the disabled residents are now living with more bed bugs than ever.

Yeah, yeah, I realize it’s complicated. But still.

Shame on the owners, and the city, for not making this right. Shame on the US government, too, for not seeing this as a problem for which they need to fund solutions. Because we are going to see this more and more: whatever the situation was in this case, there will be homeowners and landlords who can’t pay for treatment, or can’t pay for effective treatment. We can’t let people live with bed bugs indefinitely. And here’s the thing, the more people living with bed bugs, because of nonexistent or poor treatment, the more people will get bed bugs. They spread. Lawmakers and people who can take care of their own pest control costs may shake their heads and say, “too bad.” But it is not someone else’s problem, it is everyone’s problem. They will spread to anyone. We all have much more contact with one another on a daily basis than some of us would like to admit.

A warning to those who shake their heads and sigh, “Not my problem”: if you let poor people live with bed bugs, then bed bugs will, eventually, appear in your bed, to quite literally bite you in the ass.

• More bad news about Denver’s bed bug-infested Halcyon House
• More bed bugs in Nashua, NH: rooming-house tenant goes to court
• 25 Grant Street in Denver, Colorado: bed bugs for two years
• More on Denver’s Halcyon House and bed bugs

ShareThis

Wow.

Denver-based Apartment Investment and Management Co., or AIMCO, is the largest landlord in the US, with 1,370 rental properties. Attorney Jeffrey Rudnick is representing six separate clients who were or are tenants of the building, and say they were blamed (individually) for bringing in bed bugs. The landlord refused to pay for treatment. One tenant, Jessica Viccari, a nurse, complained to management.

The local manager sent up an exterminator who reported finding no evidence of bedbugs.

Unimpressed, Viccari called in her own exterminator who found plenty of bedbugs.

This is where Viccari and Park Towne Place part ways.

She complains that the company refused to pay for the exterminator who found the problem to then get rid of the bedbugs. Frustrated, she moved out. Now AIMCO wants to charge her $2,400 for breaking her lease.

AIMCO wants to charge tenants because the landlord blames them for the infestation. As lawyer Rudnick says,

After Viccari and her family called to tell me her story, I used my investigative skills to size up the situation.

By that, I mean I typed “Park Towne Place” and “bedbugs” into Google.

Up popped information about attorney Jeffrey Rudnick, who represents five other tenants in the West building who also say they suffered through bedbug infestations. They say management blamed them for the bugs. Viccari is now Rudnick’s sixth client from the West building.

“They’ve all gotten the same litany, which is you must have brought them with you,” said Rudnick, who is preparing to file a legal brief to take the tenants’ complaints into arbitration.

Viccari brought furniture from her parent’s home when she moved in. Her mother, Linda McLean, objects to AIMCO’s claim that the bedbugs came in with the tenants. “That bed and that couch were in my home,” McLean said. “There are no bedbugs in my house.”

However, AIMCO regional VP Lynn Bora

. . . said Viccari complained late in the game, just before she moved out. She also said Viccari didn’t give AIMCO a copy of the report from the exterminator who found the bedbugs.

That last bit is curious, considering that Viccari and her mother returned to her apartment last Wednesday to pick up the rest of her stuff and found that someone had been there, overturning the bed and pulling the cushions off the couch.

Viccari found a note from the building manager, saying AIMCO had indeed found bedbugs in the apartment.

The note said Viccari will be charged an extra $350 to pay for a bedbug exterminator.

So let me get this straight: the landlord claims they did not treat because there were no bed bugs. They fine the tenant $2400 for moving out of a $1200 unit because she claims its infested with a bug five other tenants are also suffering from. They refuse to believe she found bedbugs. And as she is moving out, they ransack her apartment, find bed bugs and fine her $350 for the treatment?

Talk about adding insult to injury.

• New Jersey legislators pushing to make landlords pay for bed bug treatment
• New Jersey’s laws designed to spread bed bugs in rental housing
• Jersey City legislators push to make landlords pay for some bed bug treatments
• Toronto tenants camping outside to avoid bed bugs: update

ShareThis

bed bug

Originally uploaded by earmuffin.

This is a picture on flickr that earmuffin took, and the location is given as the Beltz / McGowan apartments in August 2005. Ahhhh, August 2005. I remember it well: it was too hot in NYC, but I had never heard of bedbugs. Good times.

Not only had I not heard of bedbugs, but I should add, I had a mattress covered in a vinyl cover to protect it from dust mites. Dust mites! If only.

(Click on the photo to enlarge.)

This bedbug sufferer was right to clearly mark their items as infested. But I’d recommend going a step further: do something DESTRUCTIVE to your items. Slash those sofas and mattresses (on the street, so they don’t bleed bedbug nymphs in your home). Cut clothing in half before discarding. Trash books somehow, if you must throw them out.

Some experts say not to throw things away, but sometime you have to. Remember, if you throw something out that’s infested and a neighbor reclaims it, the bugs will come back to you.

They liked you, after all.
You were good eatin’.

• Bed bugs. Are. Not. Dust Mites.
• bed bugs, news at 11
• Another way out for your bed bug-infested mattress?
• Arctic Monkeys bitten by bed bugs

ShareThis