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Langdon Mill Apartments: now 85% bed bug-free

nobugsonme — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:24:50 +0000

Thank goodness the building is under the care of a community organization and landlord that is not willing to put up with this building being only 85% bed bug-free.

Remember this campaign to free a 20-unit Manchester, New Hampshire building (Langdon Mill Apartments) of bed bugs?

A group called NH Bed Bugs, spearheaded by members of the American Friends Service Committee and the Granite State Organizing Project, went to great lengths to try and solve the bed bug problem at Langdon Mill.

As the Concord Monitor reported Sunday,

They moved the families out of the building. They washed and dried all of their clothes and bedding on high heat. They threw out almost all of the furniture they owned – not just mattresses and couches, but tables and desks, too – and solicited donated replacements. After exterminators had sprayed everything, the families came back.

Unfortunately, when new mattresses were being brought back in on Wednesday, three units still showed signs of a bed bug infestation.

Though vastly improved, the building will continue to be treated.

Make no mistake, it is a vast improvement: the building has had bed bugs since 2005, and when NH Bed Bugs stepped in, every unit was infested.

NH Bed Bugs threw itself into the project, and learned on a large scale what individual bedbuggers learn: how difficult and expensive it is to get rid of bed bugs.

Maggie Fogarty, of the American Friends Service Committee told the Concord Monitor,

“. . . we couldn’t ask these refugee tenants to run every piece of clothing they had through a high heat cycle in the dryer. It cost us thousands of dollars to do it for them,” Fogarty said. “They certainly couldn’t afford to go out and buy all new stuff, even secondhand stuff.

“One of the problems we have not figured out is, how do you do this if you’re of limited means? How do you do this effectively?” she said. “It’s a very expensive problem.”

And Fogarty is mindful too of the difficulty of helping people get rid of this problem:

“We cannot convene hundreds of volunteers, and tens of thousands of dollars, for every building in New Hampshire,” Fogarty said. “We have to step back and look, systemically, how we can prevent this problem from spreading.”

[Emphasis mine.]

There are two important points here:

Bed bug preparations and treatment are time consuming and costly. If people cannot afford the costs of bed bug preparations and treatment, or cannot manage the physical labor, then bed bugs will continue to thrive and spread.
Bed bugs are a fact of life and cannot be completely avoided.

Some steps may help curtail their spread and/or help stop them in their tracks when they are brought in:

Everyone needs to be educated about how to avoid bringing bed bugs home;
Residential buildings, schools, office buildings, public transportation, and other locations need regular professional inspections to detect bed bugs;
Cracks and wall voids may need to be dusted and sealed, and other preventive measures taken to foil the odd bed bugs which may be brought in.

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The economy, homelessness, motels as shelters, and bed bugs

nobugsonme — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:45:25 +0000

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday on how record numbers of families are now being sheltered in motels.

In October 2007, 27 families were housed in Massachusetts motels. The number rose steeply in the last year, as the economy collapsed, many became unemployed, and foreclosures skyrocketed. The number of families sheltered in motels went from just over 100 in May 2008, to 751 families (including 1,000 children) in 39 motels as of June 2009.

This is necessary because there just aren’t enough places to rehouse people right now. But one effect is that people are living in places not equipped for cooking, bringing up children, or other aspects of daily life.

One of the problems people rehoused in motels often face, according to the article, is bed bugs:

The city’s health department is concerned about bedbugs, after complaints from residents and reports from school nurses that children from the [Cambridge Gateway Inn] motel appeared to have suffered bites. Sam Lipson, director of environmental health for the Cambridge Public Health Department, said officials worked with the motel in February to address the problems and have heard no new complaints. But hotel guests might be reluctant to complain for fear of being forced out, he added.

“They should feel confident that reporting the presence of bedbugs won’t put them at any risk,’’ Lipson said.

Of course, bed bugs are a problem now in many shelters as well as in permanent housing of every kind (from subsidized affordable units to fancy condos and mansions).

But the state does need to be accountable for keeping people safe and in appropriate housing.

And people living in any kind of housing should not have to worry they will be kicked out if they report the presence of bed bugs.

You can read more here.Similar Posts:

North Carolina shelter with bed bugs: outlook grim

nobugsonme — Sat, 23 May 2009 23:25:36 +0000

Guests of a Salvation Army shelter in Wilmington, North Carolina, are suffering from bed bug bites. And the shelter managers are having trouble getting rid of the problem.

Eleven-year-old Edwin Benitez is covered with bites. Bed bug bites from staying at the Salvation Army. They first appeared a week ago. “It feels humiliating and frightening,” said Edwin.

What an awful thing to have to deal with, on top of everything else.

The article notes that Edwin’s mother Christine Powell says staff told her they’ve been dealing with a bed bug problem for five years. However,

The Salvation Army officials said the problem started two and a half months ago. In that time, exterminators have sprayed, residents clothes have been washed, and beds sanitized. “We’re doing everything that we possibly can do. We’ve even shut down for a week so we can take out all the mattresses bought all new mattresses,” said Salvation Army’s Maj. Butch Mallard.

Mallard said $10,000 has been spent on getting rid of the bugs, but the problem is the shelter has wooden beds and the bugs live in the frames. The solution would be new metal frames, but there’s no funding.

Mallard says $12,000 is needed for new metal bed frames.

Even if frames and mattresses are replaced, it may not be enough to get rid of the bed bug problem there.

I hope that the shelter is getting good advice from knowledgeable entomologists who know bed bugs well, and good pest control treatment.

I am also concerned about the larger impact of an ongoing bed bug infestation like this. If the shelter has been battling bed bugs for five years as Powell stated, bed bugs are likely to have been spread to many other locations via guests and staff.

Guests and staff must take specific precautions to avoid spreading bed bugs elsewhere. There are links to FAQs which may be helpful here.

See the full article here: Unwelcome visitors invade Salvation Army | WWAY NewsChannel 3 | Wilmington NC News, or click here to watch the video from WWAY news.Similar Posts:

Glutted homeless shelters have trouble treating for bed bugs

nobugsonme — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:23:01 +0000

This article from the Globe and Mail is about how Bay Street (Toronto’s financial district) and charities are calling on the government to provide a “recession relief fund” for agencies that help people. (The Bay Street crowd was behind the call because they realize that due to the fall in stock prices, they can’t keep up their normal level of charitable giving.)

What caught my eye were comments about the homeless — at a time when more people than ever will likely be seeking shelter:

John Andras, senior vice president of Research Capital, has been doing work on behalf of the homeless since 1993.

“I was talking with other advocates about three weeks ago about what we were seeing out on the street, and we were getting more and more concerned about the fact that funding levels appear to be dropping, the private sector is under extreme stress, both individually and through foundations and corporations, and that the governments have yet to announce their intentions.”

Homeless shelters are already so full there isn’t even time or space to fumigate for bedbugs, he said.

It’s a small comment, but a significant one: it’s not just the cost of bed bug treatment that we have to worry about, or the difficulty of getting effective treatment; already full homeless shelters also have a logistical problem in that they can’t shut down while they get treatment.

Bed bugs can strike anyone, they aren’t caused by poverty. But you can be sure that the recession is going to make it harder for many people and agencies to curb the spread. This means even more people suffering and wasting more of their funds on bed bugs.

Rather than cutting funding for bed bug-related projects, as Cincinnati did, we need such funding more than ever.Similar Posts:

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People with bed bugs featured in “Grant a Wish” columns

nobugsonme — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:20:48 +0000

Both the San Jose Mercury News and the Stamford Advocate have a feature where they identify people in the community needing donors to “grant a wish” this holiday season.

The San Jose Mercury article I mentioned yesterday (about the San Jose Family Shelter) also describes a “Wish Book” request from the shelter:

Some of the mattresses and box springs had to go. But it’s been too expensive to trash all the wooden bunk beds and bed frames, which the bugs love to burrow in. Instead, the shelter crew has been taking apart the frames, spraying them down and letting the sun bake the creatures out of hiding, then spraying again.

For now, the bedbugs seem to have gone on hiatus, but [shelter executive director Trish] Crowder isn’t taking chances. She’s asking Wish Book readers to help her nonprofit buy heavy-duty metal beds — 70 bunks ($300 each) and 35 double beds ($300 each) and with mattresses for each ($100) — along with zip-up vinyl mattress covers ($15 each) and cotton mattress covers ($15 each).

This wish list roundup from the Stamford Advocate describes a woman needing assistance due to bed bugs,

No. 57: A recent bout with bedbugs has left Betty, 82, without a couch or comfortable chair in her apartment. A gift of $500 would allow her to replace the furniture she has lost.

If you’re in a position to help, then you can find the information on doing so by clicking the links to the paper in question. The main reason for my post, however, is to note that these requests give the public a small sense of the economic hit bed bugs can cause — beyond the cost of actual treatment — to those affected.

In these tough economic times, bed bugs can easily cause a person or an organization that is struggling financially to go over the deep end. Or at least to go without. Most people suffering from the financial effects of bed bug treatment, or related expenses (furniture replacement, commodity fumigation, moving), have nowhere to go to ask for help.

If we’re going to fight for change, people who have not had bed bugs need to be aware of the hardships — financial, emotional, and health-related stresses bed bugs cause to sufferers.Similar Posts:

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