The Structural Pest Management Association of British Columbia (SPMABC) will be hosting a free information session on bed bugs and related topics this Saturday (February 28th) at Library Square from 9:00am – 1:00pm. Admission is free, but on a first come, first served basis (the room holds 300 people).

Topics will include:

• General Bed Bug Information
• Prevention Tips
• Detection Methods
• Health Concerns
• Tenant Rights
• Landlord Obligations

For more information please email info@spmabc.com.Similar Posts:

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We now have a status update on the bill in the New Jersey Assembly which would make landlords entirely responsible for eradicating bed bugs in rental properties.

According to PolitickerNJ.com,

The Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee released the measure 5- 0 with one abstention. It now heads to the Assembly Speaker, who decides if and when to post it for a floor vote.

A3203, sponsored by Assembly Members Quigley, Spencer, and Smith, would change the situation in New Jersey. State Laws currently require landlords to pay for treatment, but they can — and often do — turn around and pass those costs on to tenants.

Jersey City recently passed an ordinance which (in my opinion) does not improve matters: it requires landlords to pay for two, and only two, bed bug treatments. If the bed bug infestation persists, tenants have to pay to get rid of the problem.  This is unfair because the problem may persist for various reasons besides the tenants’ negligence (inadequate treatment, bed bugs coming from other units, etc.)

Requiring tenants to pay for bed bug treatment — either initially, or after the second treatment — does not work on a practical level.   First, many tenants may not notice they have a bed bug problem, since many (if not most) do not react to bed bug bites.  Secondly, those who do notice a problem may not be able to pay for treatment.  They may ignore the problem or move out. These actions can cause other tenants to become infested, and they may make similar choices. In the end, the landlord may be left with a severely infested property.

When landlords are only required to treat twice, as in Jersey City, there’s no incentive to find a pest control operator who can eliminate the problem in two visits. Doing so can be difficult at the best of times, and is even more difficult if tenants are uncooperative or if multiple units are infested.

In short, the current New Jersey laws are lousy for tenants and landlords, who may end up with chronically infested buildings. Homeowners suffer as well: if more people in your area have bed bugs, your chances of picking them up somewhere increase too.

The legislation (A-3203) would make building owners entirely responsible for maintaining dwellings that are free of bedbug infestations. Under the bill, if and when a bedbug outbreak occurs, landlords would be required to exterminate the pests at their own expense.

Landlords who do not take action when an infestation is reported would face fines of $300 per infested apartment and $1,000 per infested common area. Moreover, local boards of health would be empowered to conduct exterminations and bill unresponsive landlords.

I recognize that paying for bed bug treatments causes landlords hardship, but I do believe that the current situation (which more or less encourages tenants to ignore bed bug problems until they spread throughout the building) is bad for landlords as well as tenants.

I also strongly feel landlords should demand government assistance if bed bug treatments create hardship. If we can give disaster assistance to property owners who are the victims of natural disasters like hurricanes and tornados, why not help those who are the victims of a bed bug epidemic?

The measure also would require annual inspections of all multi-unit dwellings in the state for bedbug infestations and would require the state Department of Health and Senior Services to create and distribute an informational pamphlet to educate the public about bedbugs.

This is good news. Education is the first step in avoiding bed bugs, recognizing them, and helping prevent their spread. (This is good for everyone: landlords and tenants alike.)

If you’re in New Jersey, please contact your State Assembly member and ask them to support this bill. (You can find Assembly Members via this website; keep in mind Senators and Assembly Members are included together.) And you might also contact the Speaker of the Assembly, asking they put it up for a vote ASAP.Similar Posts:

• New Jersey legislators pushing to make landlords pay for bed bug treatment
• Frankfort, Kentucky Public Housing Authority plays the “bed bug blame game”
• Atlantic City public housing: 1/3 of 800 units in four buildings infested with bed bugs
• Bill Clinton’s offices have bed bugs, according to New York Daily News
• Madison Avenue Appellate Division courthouse infested with bed bugs

Leigh Kamping-Carder has an excellent new article in the Observer’s Real Estate section on the lies landlords tell tenants and roommates tell other roommates.

At least a quarter of the article is about landlords and roommates who do not disclose the presence of bed bugs to prospective tenants or roommates until it is too late (if ever).

Thanks to the internet, those lies are being documented. Bed Bug Registry Founder Maciej Ceglowski pointed the Observer to Bed Bug Registry entries like this one, describing how a new roommate discovered the apartment came with “pets,” when s/he started getting bed bug bites:

“I started showing bites the second or third day,” wrote one poster in September, referring to an apartment in Bushwick. “[The primary tenant, Larry] claimed no knowledge of the bugs, then acknowledged that there was a problem a year ago but it had been cleared away. … I left at the end of the month. On the way out I noticed the other roommate was covered in bites as well. I left a note for the next roommate and a jar of dead bugs so that he would understand. He moved out the next day but I think Larry is looking for a new roommate.”

I have huge sympathy for this poster, and I think it is highly unethical for landlords, roommates, subletters and others to knowingly let their bed bug-infested spaces to others without disclosing the problem.

Frankly, even disclosing the presence of bed bugs is not enough. We hear stories on the forums about too many people whose response to disclosure is “oh, well, I can live with a few bugs.” (They have no idea.)

The article also highlights the fact that a primary motivation for this non-disclosure is that most potential tenants would not think bed bugs are okay bedmates. And in the current financial climate, people can’t afford to have an empty apartment or room for rent.

Where landlords are responsible for pest eradication, renters seeking roommates are in a particular bind: they may not feel they can rent the room, but they also can’t afford to live there alone.

Their options are limited: they can move (which may involve breaking the lease or subletting, which will likely present the same ethical problem as replacing roommates), they can lie, or they can accept the kind of roommates who claim not to care if the apartment has bed bugs (shudder).

In short, it is a mess.
Similar Posts:

• Mark Sheperdigian on the limits of bed bug inspections
• Status of New Jersey bed bug extermination bill A3203: so far so good
• Bed bugs in Washington, D.C.? Yes! And growing in number daily.
• Allentown’s Hamilton Street Apartments infested with bed bugs
• New York Daily News: NYC bed bug complaints up 34% in one year

Richard Jebb, the first tenant of this building to sue the landlords, lost his case.

A second person, a former tenant, is suing the landlord of the rooming house at 23-25 Temple St. in Nashua, according to the Nashua Telegraph.

Capricia Osirus, a former tenant of 23-25 Temple St., filed a summons in Hillsborough County Superior Court in Nashua last month alleging that the owners of 23-25 Temple Street Realty LLC failed to correct a bedbug infestation in her unit for more than six months in 2007 and 2008.

She’s claiming she suffered “serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries” (presumably the bed bug bites) and that she will continue to be caused pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life in the future.

Osirus, “sustained serious, severe, painful and permanent injuries,” as a result of negligent handling of the bedbug infestation at the building, Sheppard wrote, adding that Osirus had been “caused and will be caused in the future to endure pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.”

Your thoughts?
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As a good-sized city, the state capitol of Wisconsin, and a big college town (which means lots of students who tend to move frequently and often try to furnish homes on a budget), you can imagine bed bugs might be taking hold in Madison. From the Capitol Times, last Thursday, on the brink of the biggest moving day of the year: a warning to watch out for bed bugs in curbside furniture and mattresses.

Warning tenants about bed bugs mainly seems to be a yearly event in Madison, coinciding with the city’s big move-out in mid-August, when thousands of people move (either to Madison, from Madison, or from one apartment to another). This article seems to be part of a yearly tradition. Everyone needs to know that mattresses, sofas, and any other items left curbside could contain bed bugs, and transmit them to your home. People also need to know that unexplained itching, bed bug bites, or even sightings of bed bugs could occur in their new apartments, and they should be on guard for these and ready to seek help.

Here’s an article from August 17, 2007 (interesting in that it claims Wisconsin’s “relatively nice hotels” were the first places in the state to be infested — an intriguing statement, if it’s true).

Here’s another piece from the same paper on August 21, 2006, which is also notable, since it reports that a family had an apartment application rejected because they were moving from a building known to have bed bugs:

One family was rejected at a Fitchburg apartment complex last month partly because they had lived at an infested apartment at 2210 Rosenberry Road in the Allied Drive area.

Both Madison City Attorney Michael May and Tenant Resource Center program director Megin McDonell say landlords are probably within their legal rights to reject an applicant for prior bedbugs.

“It doesn’t seem fair, but there is nothing in the ordinance that prohibits that screening criteria,” McDonell said Thursday.

We have not heard of this happening elsewhere, but I do not doubt it has happened.

Another source of concern in Madison: there’s an ordinance in the city which allows tenants to take care of certain repairs and deduct expenses from their rent (the Rent Abatement ordinance).  And according to this October 2006 Capital Times article, pests may be one issue tenants are encouraged to (or may think they can) resolve under this “self help” ordinance:

The intent of the new “self-help” ordinance, approved unanimously by the council Tuesday, is to allow tenants to address certain problems and, after review by the city’s building inspectors, deduct the expenses from their rent payments.

Shakira Parker said she would like to deduct the $75 she spent on insecticides to try to kill the cockroaches in her apartment in the Allied Drive neighborhood.

Several others also listed insect infestations first among the problems that landlords in the area have neglected. Tenants described sending children off to school, covered in bedbug bites.

The Capital Times was uncertain whether pest control might be among the problems tenants are encouraged and allowed to “fix” themselves according to the then-new self-help ordinance, which states that:

If, in the end, the landlord was unresponsive to a problem that the city deemed in need of repair, the tenant could be reimbursed for 125 percent of the costs.

Fixing a leak or patching a hole is one thing, but the idea of tenants self-treating for bed bugs is a terrible one. The ordinance does not allow for tenants fixing problems that could threaten safety or harm living conditions, but if tenants even think they can get reimbursed for treating their own bed bugs under the law, this is bad:

George Hank, director of the city’s inspection unit, said he was “generally very supportive” of the law, but said was concerned with how it might affect the use of insecticides.

If tenants take insect control into their own hands and believe they will be reimbursed for their efforts, he said, they might apply pesticides on top of other pesticides, possibly also duplicating efforts a landlord is already trying.

“That could create health hazards,” he said.

Yes it could. We think bed bug treatment is best done by a licensed and experienced professional who knows bed bugs, both because they can get rid of bed bugs more thoroughly and quickly, and because they know how to do it safely.

Bed bugs may be among the problems Madison landlords neglect, but they are the last problem in the world that tenants should be encouraged to try and self treat. Doing so can make them spread, and even cause harm to the individual.

For more on bed bugs in Madison, see this brochure “Don’t Pick Up Bed Bugs” from Madison’s excellent Tenant Resource Center (click here to load a PDF).

Note to Wisconsin residents: the Tenant Resource Center is a good place to look into your rights as a tenant in the state of Wisconsin, not just in Madison. Information is given here on your rights in Madison and Milwaukee, and phone numbers are provided for Building Inspectors and other resources in cities state-wide.Similar Posts:

• Wisconsin Dept. of Corrections houses former inmates in bed bug-infested motel
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I loved the headline of this article accompanying news video from WBNS 10TV:

“Bed Bugs Infest Apartment Building.” News at five.

Seriously, what would the world be like if every infested building was featured in just one major local news story? I can’t help having this thought when I see such headlines.

Sadly, that’s where my amusement ended.

The James Plaza Apartments in Cleveland is battling bed bugs, and after repeated treatments, bed bugs are still going strong. One tenant told reporters she’s moving out (good luck to her new neighbors!) and another wept as she described her bed bug experience.

Not to be upstaged, the management company made it clear who they feel is to blame:

Ebner Properties issued a statement to 10TV News, saying, “One of the apartment industry’s biggest fears is for a tenant to bring bed bugs into the community because it can entail such a lengthy and extensive treatment program.”

Wow. I’m speechless.

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A Halifax resident going by the moniker “Bugged by Bedbugs” used the soapbox “Love the way we bitch” on Halifax website The Coast, to call fellow residents to action on the bed bug issue, in a post entitled “WTF is with the bedbugs?”:

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.Similar Posts:

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Lindor Reynolds of the Winnipeg Free Press reports on a bed bug eviction case in Winnipeg: a woman was evicted from her Sherbrook Street apartment. It was infested with bed bugs. She is disabled and on social assistance. This is a heart-breaking story.

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.Similar Posts:

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We haven’t had any real data about how many people in Toronto are suffering from bed bugs since the 2003 survey of Toronto PCOs.

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.Similar Posts:

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• Apartmentratings.com is a way to check what other tenants are saying about your building. It is not widely used, but like anything else, can be another tool, along with the bedbugregistry.com. Don’t forget to leave your review and warn others. There are 623 posts today featuring “bed bugs.” Don’t forget to search for “bedbugs” too!
• This Information Really Bugs Me!!! : Real Estate Blog for the Golden Isles of GA including St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island, Sea Island, and Brunswick, GA. Georgia coastal islands realtor warns customers about bed bugs.
• Google Search for “bed bugs” on tenant.net Search for “bed bugs” on tenant.net (a NYC renter’s discussion board) yields 54 results, “bedbugs” 64.
• YouTube – Bed Bugs Gone Wild!Another WLWT CHannel 5 News video from Cincinnati about bed bugs and their hold on that city. This appears to have first aired in September.

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