There is a certain trio of dusky-colored high-rise apartment buildings in Halifax that are, and have always been, swarming with bedbugs.

Since these infested buildings have been gentrified and rented out to the oft-mobile university student population, what we have is a spread of bedbugs to other homes and buildings throughout Halifax.

Current legislation places the responsibility of bedbug control on the person who brought them into the building. Since extermination is expensive, tenants stay mum about it until the infestation spreads like wildfire to their neighbors.

The law regarding who pays for bed bug treatment in Nova Scotia rentals is a bit murky.

The CBC tells us, in their round-up of Canadian laws pertaining to this problem,

In Nova Scotia, Halifax doesn’t have clear-cut legislation for dealing with bedbugs. Responsibility for extermination falls upon the tenant if a landlord can prove a tenant brought the bugs in. The Halifax agency has found that landlords often foot the bill as it’s difficult to prove there were no bugs before a tenant moves in. Tenants are advised to write a letter to a landlord asking to deal with the problem within a reasonable timeframe. If the landlord refuses, a hearing can be conducted in front of the officer of residential tenancies.

Here’s my concern: “Responsibility for extermination falls upon the tenant if a landlord can prove a tenant brought the bugs in.”

What Bugged by Bedbugs highlights is that this motivates many tenants to not seek help — as long as they resist treatment, and bed bugs spread everywhere, individual tenants can no longer be assumed to be the “source.”

Of course, tenants who may be making such a choice, consciously, or by default (because they simply cannot pay for treatment) assume they are the “source” of their building’s problem.

Many Bedbugger Forum participants also assume they are the first in their building to have bed bugs. Why? Because landlords and neighboring tenants are not under any obligation to disclose their bed bug problem.

The reasoning seems to be that if I admit to having bed bugs, I will be seen as the source. Unfortunately, tenants have good reason for worrying about this — landlords and neighbors will likely assume the first person to find bed bugs is the “source,” even though it turns out, in so many cases, others have them too and either (a) don’t know about them, (b) know about them and are unsure what to do, or (c) know about them and — for whatever reason — just don’t care.

We have to remember that a great many people fall into category (a) and have no idea they have bed bugs. So your neighbor may be bitten badly and for a long time, but have no bite marks, no itching, and not see any bed bugs, until the problem becomes quite bad and they are crawling on the walls in daylight.

The bed bug blame game — in this case, blaming the “canary” who first notices and announces the presence of bed bugs in a building — isn’t fair. And it’s often not accurate that this person is the “source” of the building’s bed bugs.

And, let’s face it, the way bed bugs are spreading, I don’t think it’s fair to blame people for unknowingly bringing bed bugs into their building — even if they did so — if they did not have the awareness they were doing so. If you got bed bugs riding on a city bus or sitting in a library, who is to blame? Collectively, everyone needs to deal with the problem.

Bugged by Bedbugs suggests Halifax residents write to their Halifax Municipal Councillors:

I say anyone who has experienced the anxiety and disgust of a bedbug infestation, and anyone who does not want to live through the former, should write to your local Halifax councillor and demand legislation that places the responsibility of bedbug control on the landlord. Such a law would force landlords to keep buildings bug-free by regular maintenance, since an infestation would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The problem with laws that force the “tenant who brought bed bugs in” to pay for treatment, is both that pinpointing such a “source” is more difficult than people think, and also that infestations quickly spread and get out of control.

On the other hand, I would not simply stop with passing the buck to landlords Here in NYC landlords are responsible in most cases, but buildings still become badly infested, tenants still fear reporting the problem will lead to blame, and negative repercussions. The inspection system (where people call 311 to report bed bugs) does not work well, since inspectors apparently will not file a violation unless tenants can show them a live bed bug scurrying around in the home, in daytime. And landlords don’t necessarily get rid of the problem even though the laws say they have to.

I think Bugged by Bedbugs has the right idea about the problem here, but I would argue for a more complex solution.

We need to remember that tenants do have some responsibility to help keep buildings bed bug-free. I am also mindful on the terrible impact bed bugs can have, financially, on landlords. Bed bugs are not good for anyone involved.

Therefore, rather than simply push for laws which place the financial obligations on landlords, we need to also push for local government assistance to help landlords get rid of bed bugs in their buildings and keep them bed bug-free. Such assistance might include guidance on the best practices for bed bug treatment and prevention, financial assistance where needed in properly eliminating bed bugs from a building, and educational programs for landlords, staff, and tenants, to prevent future outbreaks. Ideally it would probably also include city-wide programs for dealing with infested refuse, educating everyone in the city about bed bugs, and taking reports of bed bugs and keeping track of where infestations occur.

Bugged by Bedbugs also has the right idea about contacting politicians and demanding help. Wherever you live, contacting your local political representatives is a good idea. Tell them about your bed bug experience and the impact it has had on your life, and why they need to take action to help residents fight bed bugs.

Halifax residents, you can find your Councillor here, and send them an email here.

• Halifax: where the bed bug “blame game” is the law
• More on Canada’s laws re: bed bugs and tenants: province by province
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.
• Bedbugs called “a new kind of roach”; building managment lies

ShareThis

But this is also a complicated story: George Bibik, owner of the 30-unit building, was advised to evict the woman by the health department.

He did evict the woman. He did so on the advice of the health department which, acting on a complaint from other tenants, found her one-bedroom apartment infested with bedbugs. Officials ordered the apartment sealed, the contents destroyed and the entire block fumigated.

The problem, Bibik said, is that the woman has a mental illness that causes her to “dumpster dive” — that is to scour trash bins for anything of interest — and to stockpile her findings in her home.

After she received her eviction notice, Bibik said, the woman removed scores of boxes from the apartment. It still took him 13 trips to the dump to clean out the 600-square-foot, one-bedroom suite.

“The health inspector said it was one of the worst things she’d ever seen,” Bibik said. “Bed bugs usually only come out at night. They were crawling all over everything during the day. It was awful.”

When the floor-to-ceiling boxes were removed from the bedroom, the building’s owner discovered the walls were coated with mould. “I had to wash everything down with Javex,” Bibik said. “Now I have to paint the entire suite.”

Every unit had to be treated, at $80 a pop. The article says “fumigated,” but the price tells me it was traditional spraying. I sincerely hope Bibik understands this must be repeated several more times at two-week intervals. Ideally, all adjacent units would be inspected–anyone with a known infestation has to do more than just get sprayed, they need to deal with clothing and possessions properly.

Despite all this, Bibik, rightly in my opinion, does not blame the tenant. As Reynolds says:

He’s angry too, but not with his former tenant.

He’s angry that the social services system does such a poor job of helping people with mental illness to find safe housing where they’ll be looked after.

He’s angry there was no one making sure the woman wasn’t in trouble.

“I can only go into an apartment so often,” he said, “and I can only go in if the tenant has a problem. Why isn’t there someone taking care of her? She’s ill. Her social worker knows she’s ill. We have to have housing in this city where people get proper care.”

This is the second time Bibik has had a tenant with a noticeable mental illness, one that led to compulsive behaviour. That time, he spent ages on the phone trying to find help for the woman.

I have no doubts that this is a common problem. While bed bugs do not develop simply because you have a cluttered home, activities like dumpster diving (and bringing in used furniture or other items from the curb) can introduce the problem. Hoarding behaviors in and of themselves may mask a bed bug problem, or may prevent the tenant from seeking help, if they are concerned about others seeing their posessions.

There are multiple victims here: the mentally-ill person whose behavior is introducing or harboring bed bugs, the neighbors who may become infested, the landlord who has to pay to deal with it. It is a complex situation, to be sure. The one thing we can be sure of is that if such conditions are allowed to continue, those bed bugs will spread throughout the building.

Simply evicting such a tenant is not enough–social service agencies must step in. Or those bed bugs are simply going to travel to a new location with this tenant, infesting another motel, homeless shelter, apartment building.

And I want to be really clear here–we’ve heard other cases of tenants being evicted by landlords simply because they were the first to notice or to report bed bugs in the building. That is a completely different situation. Landlords who engage in that kind of retaliation don’t understand the problem, and aren’t likely to eradicate it from their buildings until they do.

It’s also really important to note that you can have engaged in dumpster diving in the past, or be a hoarder, or have a clutter problem, and not be the source of your building’s bed bugs. There is no definite relationship there. We have to reserve a nugget of skepticism whenever someone declares one unit to be “the epicenter” of a building’s bed bugs. In this case, it does sound like the unit was particularly bad, however.

You can read the article here.

• Bedbug evictions: Edmonton tenants evicted because they did not prepare for spraying
• Bed bug notice: East Village, NYC, January 2008
• Nashua, NH Health Officers on prowl for bed bugs
• Disabled NJ man who reported bed bugs is evicted for not doing prep & (allegedly) not reporting bed bugs promptly

ShareThis

But this article in Friday’s Toronto Sun has some interesting statistics. On the one hand,

According to Reg Ayre, the city’s Healthy Environments manager, Toronto Public Health received 194 calls for bed bug inquiries in 2004, 147 calls in 2005 and 160 in the first nine months of 2006.

That’s just calls to the public health department, though.

The little insects are spreading their non-existent wings and once again showing up in beds, and homes, across Canada, making them a significant issue of public concern.

“We started receiving anecdotal reports that bed bugs were on the rise,” Ayre said. “Prior to 2003-04 it was a non-issue for us.”

Four years later, Ayre says they are constantly sending investigators out to bed bug calls around the city.

From surveys of pest control companies, Ayre said it’s clear all communities are seeing an increase in bed bugs this year.

Disturbingly, individual Toronto PCOs record much higher figures, with one PCO seeing as many as four times TPH’s yearly figure per month.

One company said it performs 1,200 bed bug treatments per year while another said it’s spraying 400-500 homes per month.

Readers will recall a similar discrepancy between official complaints and PCOs’ reports in New York City: six months after the HPD tallied around 4600 calls and 1190 actual bed bug cases reported to 311 in twelve months (summer 2005-summer 2006), one well-known PCO claimed to be getting 85 actual bed bug calls a day (and presumably another 15 false alarms). That’s 22,100 cases per year for one PCO alone, if numbers held steady. (And that was a year ago.)

Clearly someone needs to get data on the full number of homes–public and private rentals, owned homes, as well as institutions– treated every year. Data on bed bugs in hotels and other businesses needs to be collected too. Even if bed bugs have not been proven to transmit disease, they definitely cause stress and much loss of property and income. They hurt individuals and business owners.

I’ve long said we need actual data on bed bug cases in New York City, where the only official data on bed bug cases comes from renters’ calls to 311 (the city’s information line). How people are supposed to know to call 311 with a pest complaint, which everyone knows is something you call your landlord about, is a mystery.

However, why most people don’t call 311 in such circumstances is not a mystery: want to stay in your apartment and not piss off the landlord? Give him/her a chance to solve your pest problem before reporting the building to the housing department.

And that, my friends, means most cases are under the government’s radar, and NYC does not have any reliable data about how many people here have bed bugs. We need a bed bug study done in New York, and so does Toronto.

Read about the 2003 Toronto data here on the CDC website.

• bed bugs: incidence studies needed in NYC and elsewhere
• Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington in NYC: latest bed bug lawsuit
• Toronto Public Health now has a Bed Bug Action Committee. Action, people.
• Reg Ayre of Toronto Public Health: bed bugs a “health concern,” not a “health hazard”

ShareThis

• Use bed bug registries and warn others about infested buildings and hotels!
• Bed bugs invade Chicago’s Presidential Towers, and another Vancouver Island detox
• Forget black mattress stains, bed bugs, shells, and eggs: NMPA press release tells consumers to look for “blood spots”
• Brown student wants to provide free bed bug treatment to those who can’t pay

ShareThis

I am astonished to find that, not even three months later, a second “The Hunt” column results in a bedbugged apartment. In this case, a young couple (Jon Werberg and Helene Mattera) moved into a semi-gut-renovated apartment on East 117th Street, only to find various troubles, including the elusive cimex lectularius, Mr. Bed Bug.

When the two arrived in late summer, the workers weren’t quite finished. “The hassles started right from the beginning,” Mr. Werberg said. They included sporadic hot water, trash in the hallways, rats and — worst of all — bedbugs. The couple spent hundreds of dollars on laundry. They now wish they had thought harder about building maintenance and general cleanliness.

Although bed bugs can often accompany poor building maintenance and hygiene problems, there is no relation between them, and it’s important to keep this in mind.

Ms. Mattera continues,

“My favorite thing about the apartment is the fact that two of my good friends live within minutes,” Ms. Mattera said. “That is the greatest thing, just calling them and saying, ‘I’ll meet you downstairs.’”

Which is fine, if the bed bugs are gone. If they’re not, it kind of takes all the fun out of the apartment.

It does make you wonder, if the New York Times can follow two couples in an apartment search leading to bed bugs, twice in twelve weeks, how many people in NYC are moving into bedbugged digs?

We know bed bugs in NYC are spreading like wildfire.

Maybe the New York Times should spend some time investigating how far bed bugs have truly spread, and how common they now are. Besides the two “The Hunt” columns, and an op ed, the paper last covered bed bugs in October 2006, using the city’s data on bed bug violations from the summer of 2006 (only those cases reported to 311 and declared “bed bugs” by city inspectors). It’s time to challenge the relevance of data that relies on people calling the city’s information hotline to report a pest most only call their landlords or a PCO about. It’s time for real  data.

You can read all about this failed “Hunt” and weep, here.

• Bed bugs: now appearing in news articles which are not about bed bugs
• Washington Post prints correction thanks to bed bug activist
• Fox employee suing building management, maintenance over bed bug bites
• How bad are bed bugs in Toronto? Nobody knows for sure.

ShareThis

The same day that we ask, with Rene Laraine, what might be causing his bed bugs to persist despite nine bed bug treatments by licensed PCOs, Nicholas Brown brings to mind similar concerns.

Brown, chronicling his bed bug experience on the Huffington Post, is now well past his seventh week. He has had five treatments (so treatment intervals are not the problem in this case). He is planning treatment six, the last one before he moves.

Again, I would bet money on the neighbors as source.

Like many of us, on this blog that was originally dubbed “Your foxhole, in the war against bed bugs” by its avowedly pacifist creator (yes, people, that’s how much I hate bed bugs), Brown mobilizes the war metaphors for his final assault:

Day 52

There comes a time in most insurgencies when you should cut your losses and leave. Maybe the enemy was more persistent than you imagined; maybe he was better at hiding; or maybe the weapons you used against him were inadequate. In any case, no one has ever accused the United States of pulling out of a conflict too early. And while I am all for America, I dont wish to repeat her mistakes.

I have returned from the farm and the squalor that confronts me confirms that the bedbugs are winning in our apartment. Yes, we have inflicted casualties. Yes, we have damaged their infrastructure. But at the end of the day, there are more of them than there are of us and we cannot win their hearts and minds. Moreover, there is great suspicion within the building that our downstairs neighbors are harboring bedbugs. Despite several requests, they have refused sprayings in their apartment. The bugs, we suspect, hide downstairs until the toxins in our place wear off and then return in greater strength. We can only assume they have training camps. We are keeping diplomatic channels open, but are not optimistic about pacifying either our apartment or the one below us.

We are calling in one more spraying, but the backbone has fallen out of our effort and we do not expect success. Our departure wont involve an embassy swamped with desperate refugees, but it will involve the horrid logistics of moving, made all the more awful by the necessity of inspecting and poisoning or freezing every item before it is packed away. Its a depressing thought, but honestly not all that much more work than washing, drying and sealing away all your clothing and papers and other possessions. Now come the slow logistics of apartment hunting, brokers fees, and long Saturdays devoted to subway rides and open houses. We are optimistic though. In the neon-lit consumerism of the new American Christmas, minor commercial miracles happen all the time. Uncle Bob might get some nose trimmers from the Airmall catalog; Delores might tip a busboy; and cousin Herbie may finally give in to those Debeers commercials and propose to that on-again off-again cocktail waitress he has been seeing for years. And maybe, just maybe, we will find our own minor Christmas miracle: a small apartment thats reasonably priced, relatively clean, and blessedly uninfested.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard from readers who moved almost nothing, took extreme precautions, and nevertheless brought bed bugs with them. In some cases, they chose new, equally infested quarters. Maybe they even rented a truck with bed bugs. But in most cases, they probably simply managed to move their bed bug despite precautions.

It’s worth moving during treatment, and treating at the other end. Yes, anonymous poster who raves when we mention pre-emptive treatment, we know “preventive” treatment isn’t supposed to work. But we know too many nice people who felt they had to pay for treatment in their new digs. This isn’t preventive, it’s reactive.

Good luck to Nicholas Brown. Unlike Amanda’s saga on Apartmenttherapy, I do hope we get to hear the end of the story.

• Nicholas Brown’s “The Bedbug Chronicles: Part 6″ sounds pretty familiar
• bed bug news for 2007-11-09
• The Huffington Post: Nicholas Brown’s bed bugs, volumes 3 and 4
• The Huffington Post on bed bugs

ShareThis

Rene Laraine of Thousand Oaks, California, has bed bugs.

Laraine said that after nine treatments performed by two pest control companies, the bedbugs are still there.

A representative for Essex Properties, the company that manages the complex, said the company is doing what it can to try to treat the problem in Laraine’s apartment.

What?

No. I am sorry.

If you have had nine treatments and still have bed bugs, I would seriously question whether someone–landlord, pest control operator, tenant, or neighboring tenant– is not doing what they should to eliminate those bed bugs.

Let’s just go through some things that might be going wrong:

1. The landlord has not had a qualified and knowledgeable pest control operator inspect every adjacent unit (top, bottom, and all sides) and treat them properly if necessary.
2. Treatment is not being repeated by the PCO at appropriate intervals (hint: PCOs who know bed bugs tell us they treat every 10-14 days; at least one in Denver treats at 3-week intervals instead, due to low humidity). Treatment must continue without a gap, until all bed bugs and signs of bed bugs are completely gone.
3. The residents in every infested unit are not getting the same treatment, at the same times.
4. The residents in every infested unit are not cooperating 100% with treatment, and following preparations as instructed by a PCO (who has such guidelines)– these often include washing and drying all clothes and linens on hot, and keeping them in sealed bags, and encasing the mattress. They may be much more extensive.
5. Tenants or building employees are unknowingly re-infesting the unit. (This can happen if you got bed bugs from somewhere and you are getting them again, and again.)

Some of these things can happen due to simple ignorance about how bed bugs operate. For example, a landlord might ask neighbors if they had itchy bites or saw bed bugs. If they say no, it might be assumed they are not being bitten. (Not necessarily true!) PCOs may have treated bed bugs a number of times and may still not understand that fact.

Likewise, PCOs might have difficulty finding visual evidence, or may only count actual bed bugs as visual evidence. (But not seeing these, or not seeing them easily, does not mean a tenant is bed bug-free.)

Landlords may suspect or know neighbors are infested but may be allowing them to refuse treatment (based on anything from religious to medical objections to pesticides). While people may be concerned about the actions of pesticides on children, people with illnesses, and pets, bed bugs must nevertheless be remedied somehow. Neighbors who refuse traditional pesticides must be treated somehow. There are other options.

PCOs may refuse to treat infested units that are not properly prepped. Or may treat un-prepped units without success.  Landlords might simply ignore those tenants’ units. This is a big mistake. Even if Rene is prepped, if his neighbor isn’t, the bed bugs can keep coming.

Other issues may be happening to make bed bugs hard to eradicate: pesticide resistance is real. However, good PCOs are aware of it and have options in their arsenal like dusts which have a mechanical action, and steam: neither of these can be resisted if the bed bug is in contact with them. Combined with pesticides, PCOs should be able to eliminate even pyrethroid-resistant strains of bed bugs, which do exist.

Some of these factors may be the tenant’s fault, make no mistake. Or they may be another tenant’s fault. Many of these factors mean landlords are mismanaging treatment, or hiring PCOs who mismanage treatment. I would put my money on adjacent units being infested and either overlooked or not treated properly.

Whatever the cause, landlords and tenants should be trying to avoid the above situations.

And if you have bed bugs after even four treatments, let alone nine, something is terribly wrong.

• Bed bugs at Berkeley will be treated with… say what?
• Bed bugs & tenant organizing: don’t take this lying down
• Bed bugs in North Jersey
• 25 Grant Street in Denver, Colorado: bed bugs for two years

ShareThis

• bed bugs in Toronto; Vancouver; Billings, MT,
• bed bug news for 2007-11-11: Lexington, KY and Toronto, ON
• Allegations of bed bugs affect tourism, according to travel agent
• Bed bugs in casino and senior apartments in New Jersey, Binghamton University (again) and another dust mite photo in the news

ShareThis

• added to the “Tenants and Landlords FAQ”: Washington, D.C. and Florida
• Nicholas Brown’s “The Bedbug Chronicles: Part 6″ sounds pretty familiar
• Washington Post prints correction thanks to bed bug activist
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto

ShareThis

• bed bug news for 2007-11-15
• How to avoid bed bugs, according to Texas A&M’s student paper
• Bed bugs at Berkeley will be treated with… say what?
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back

ShareThis