Gale Brewer (Manhattan 6th District) has been at the forefront of the efforts to introduce meaningful bed bug legislation in the New York City Council for the past three years. We recently had an update on those efforts.

In January of this year, as the city launched its bed bug seminars, Council Member Brewer had this to say to NY1:

“The bottom line is bed bugs must be dealt with. And they are a mental health issue if they are not a physical health issue,” said City Councilwoman Gale Brewer. “New Yorkers really need to know their government is behind them in trying to get rid of bedbugs.”

My own theory for why these efforts have not yet yielded control measures that are appropriate to the high levels of infestation in New York City is that the stigma of bed bugs prevents many New Yorkers from voicing their concerns, asking for help and supporting the legislative proposals.

Or could it be that there aren’t enough bed bugs in New York City!? Is there or isn’t there an epidemic? Will you come to the open house to meet Council Member Brewer and tell her what you think?

Thanks to Crawledon for the open house info!

GALE BREWER’S SPRING OPEN HOUSE

Sunday, May 18, 4-7PM & Monday, May 19, 5:30-8:30 PM

Council Member Gale A. Brewer’s District Office at 563 Columbus Ave. (at 87th St.)

Refreshments

Details via Manhattan Community Board No. 4 news.

• Gale Brewer’s Bed Bug Update
• NYC Bed Bug Task Force / City Council Update
• More on New York’s response to bed bugs
• New York Magazine on bed bugs

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Oddly enough, I could not find it on the NY City Council website or on Brewer’s defunct blog.
THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
COUNCIL MEMBER GALE A. BREWER

CITY HALL
NEW YORK, NY 10007
TEL: 212-788-6975
FAX: 212-513-7717
www.nyccouncil.info

Brewer Bedbug Battle Continues!

February 28, 2008 - For the last two years I have worked with the Bloomberg Administration to develop a public education program to inform residents about bedbug prevention, identification, and treatment. Since early January 2008, public education seminars, led by the staff from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, have been held in Queens and Manhattan, with a third planned for Brooklyn in March.

At every gathering hundreds upon hundreds of residents have attended; it is standing room-only because New Yorkers are desperate for accurate information about bedbugs. In our outreach to the community, residents are encouraged to contact 311 if they cannot attend one of the initial launch seminars or to request a seminar for their own community. Due to the overwhelming response, HPD has partnered with Operation Hope in West Harlem to host a seminar this evening. Additional seminars for April and May are planned and HPD is also folding bedbug education into the Owner?s Night curriculum.

But we also have a lot more to do. I am currently drafting legislation requiring the City to provide large plastic bags and brightly colored “Caution! This May Contain BedBugs!” stickers to City residents in order to completely encase infested furniture and other household items intended for curb-side pick-up. Both the bags and stickers would be available through 311 and at City agency offices. Piloted by the City of Boston, this service would increase the public?s awareness of bedbugs, as well as help protect sanitation workers who pick up infested furniture. I have also introduced legislation to mandate coordination of city agencies on this topic and to focus on the transportation of new and used mattresses.

Contact: Shula Warren 347-563-1295

• Gale Brewer invites bedbuggers to her annual open house
• New York City is behind in the bed bug wars
• Second Bed Bug Seminar (2/5 in Astoria)
• Bed bugs in NYC: if we could just get Bill Murray on the case

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It might be considered ridiculous, but I have been pondering this attention being paid by the city on bedbugs … not to giggle at the thought … but to sort of admire that the arcane subject should reach the level of spending city resources.

Here, the mayor has launched an enormous undertaking to think about planning for the year 2030 with the staggering prediction that we will have one million more residents. And plans are for planting thousands of trees, reducing pollution, building more schools, getting cars off our streets, being 10 minutes from a playground or a park — an enormous number of things to do. And we have the time to think of bedbugs.

One could say, “Only in New York,” and that’s probably true. One can’t suspect that such a gathering would be held in Olathe, Kan., for example.

This could lead some cynics to complain that with all the “real” problems in New York, why spend time on a rather piddling subject? But most of the “real” problems are understood; it’s the solutions that seem to escape us.

For example, look how long it has taken this city to figure out how to create public toilets in places where crowds gather — a “problem” that hasn’t seemed to perplex other major cities — and we still don’t seem to have hit on a logical answer.

So maybe we should commit resources to something we might be able to master, like the forlorn bedbug, and let the think tanks concentrate on such things as improving commuter ferry service.

Perhaps Olathe, Kansas, is not holding any bed bug seminars, but Mr. Holt might be surprised to find that cities like Cincinnati and Lexington, Kentucky have concerns about bed bugs. Cincinnati is doing far more than New York to deal with the problem. And they’re right to do so. Bed bugs are a lot harder to “master” than Holt thinks.

And, sadly, bed bugs become less arcane every day, here in New York. If more isn’t done–yes, more even than hosting a few seminars on the topic–New York City in 2010, let alone 2030, is going to be a nightmare for many, many more people.

You can read the rest of Holt’s editorial here. And consider sending a letter to the editor, perhaps?

• Gale Brewer’s Bed Bug Update
• The first “bed bug seminar” hit New York City last night
• Bed bugs in NYC: if we could just get Bill Murray on the case
• HPD seminar will be coming to Greenpoint– thanks to community lobbyists!

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NY1’s Cindi Avila quoted Gale Brewer as to the reason New York is taking action:

Last year, the city’s 311 hotline got 7,000 bedbug related calls, almost four times more than just three years earlier. Now the city is taking action, educating the public about the painful problem.

“The bottom line is bed bugs must be dealt with. And they are a mental health issue if they are not a physical health issue,” said City Councilwoman Gale Brewer. “New Yorkers really need to know their government is behind them in trying to get rid of bedbugs.”

We look forward to knowing more about what’s happening in these educational events:

Wednesday the city announced plans to hold three seminars aimed at educating the public about the blood-sucking parasites.

“To ensure they know when they have bedbugs, to ensure they know how to exterminate the bedbugs, and to ensure that they identify if a neighbor may also have bedbugs that could spread into their homes,” said City Councilman Miguel Martinez of the purpose of the meetings.

These three goals are far more difficult than perhaps even Councilman Martinez understands. Bed bugs can be hard to locate. Perhaps the most important thing New Yorkers need to know is that entomologist Michael Potter estimates as many as 50% of people don’t react to bed bug bites. So you can have them and have no idea.

And tipping your mattress over often does not lead to enlightenment, as many bedbuggers have found–it’s not that easy to detect bed bugs.

Meanwhile, AP reporter Deepti Hajela wrote an article that was picked up all over, including Newsday.

Hajela spoke with officials about the reason for the campaign:

“It’s about quality of life,” Luiz Aragon, deputy commissioner in the Department of Housing and Preservation, said. “We know that people are sometimes attempting to deal with this problem but they don’t know how to.”

In my experience, knowledge is crucial, but only part of the battle.

For tenants, getting landlords to treat properly, using licensed Pest Control Operators and treating until a problem is fully gone, is the real struggle.

I am sure many landlords, PCOs, and bedbugged neighbors, would also complain about some tenants not cooperating with preparations, or not reporting the problem, or trying to self-treat.

Meanwhile, most people in co-ops have to figure out how to get their association on board with inspections and treatment.

Education helps with all that, but the city needs knowledge–of who’s infested, and muscle–to force action.

And the city will surely eventually have to help landlords and homeowners who can’t afford proper treatment, and tenants who may need help with preparations for treatment, not only to eliminate bed bugs but to keep the problem from spreading.

You can read Deepti Hajela’s AP story in Newsday here.

You can read Cindi Avila’s NY1 story here.

• Bed bugs in Ventura County (Thousand Oaks, California)
• 25 Grant Street in Denver, Colorado: bed bugs for two years
• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• California fights bed bugs: good news from the golden state

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The Daily News reports that New York City is going to get a bed bug education campaign.

The article reports that there will be town hall meetings about bed bugs in Washington Heights (1/28), Astoria (2/5) and Bushwick (3/12).

Housing officials will roll out the campaign with a town hall meeting Jan. 28 in Washington Heights, where the creatures have rampaged through tenements, churches, bodegas, taxi garages and upscale co-ops overlooking the Hudson River.

Residents there have been under siege: The number of complaints has skyrocketed from 62 in 2005 to 366 last year, when 119 landlords were hit with violations.

More community forums will follow in two other neighborhoods with recent bedbug outbreaks: Astoria on Feb. 5, and Bushwick, Brooklyn, on March 12.

Tenants, homeowners and community leaders will be taught in English and Spanish how to identify bedbugs, exterminate them in a safe and low-cost manner and guard against future contaminations.

Just as important, they’ll be told what not to do, like spray an apartment, which can scatter the pests, or pour gasoline on mattresses, which poses a fire hazard.

This is all good, but I hope it will be just the start of a wider campaign to raise awareness. Television, billboard, newspaper, and bus shelter advertisements should be implemented to raise awareness, though there has been no suggestion this will happen. If the city wants to fight bed bugs, it is going to cost money, but not nearly as much as continuing to ignore the problem would have cost us in lost tourist income.

Awareness is just the start; as we’ve been saying for a long time, we need local government to track infestations. Someone needs to know where the bed bugs are and how widespread infestations are. Calls to 311 are just the tip of the iceberg. The city is still in denial about the true scope of the problem.

Another goal of the campaign: Alerting immigrants with limited English to watch out for unscrupulous merchants.

“Selling refurnished mattresses to Dominican immigrants who think they’re brand new - without telling them they’ve been reserviced - is a big business in my district,” said City Councilman Miguel Martinez (D-Washington Heights). “Unfortunately, many of those mattresses are crawling with bedbugs.”

This is important. The resale of mattresses should be banned. It should be illegal to pick up and resell any items marked as infested with bed bugs. And people need to learn to mark them as such.
Ultimately, though, the city is going to need to take a tougher line with landlords and tenants. Tenants must report bed bugs, landlords must treat them properly, PCOs must be contracted to come back until bed bugs are gone.

City inspectors should consider employing bed bug dogs to help them detect bed bugs, since visual inspections are time consuming and quick inspections often miss bed bugs.

Finally, financial assistance will be needed on several levels: homeowners and landlords may need assistance with proper treatment. And elderly, disabled, and other people will need physical and financial assistance with doing proper preparation for treatment.

I hope the city will institute a bed bug task force and staff it with entomologists who are true experts on bed bugs–and I hope these experts will be listened to and their suggestions followed. And soon.

This is no hero on a white horse, folks, but it is a start.

Check out the Daily News story here.

Update later in the day on 1/15:

Here’s a video from ABC7 Eyewitness News at 5 pm today.  (Click on the number “2″ next to the bed bug photo, to see the video.)

It is not clear what the city is going to do, besides hold these meetings and work on the mattress resale issue. I guess we will know more tomorrow when the plan is officially unveiled.

The ABC7 video features Jeffery Eisenberg of Pest Away, and a Pest Away tech reporting that they use two chemicals in fighting bed bugs (Suspend and Gentrol).

The newscasters quipped to one another at the end,

“You said you’d get a new bed, right?”

“And you said you’d get a new house!”

Sorry ladies. It’s not that easy.

• bed bugs, news at 11
• Lexington, KY vs. New York, NY: a tale of two bedbugged cities
• Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati
• The first “bed bug seminar” hit New York City last night

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