The official New York City data on how many people have bed bugs consists of two sets of numbers: calls to 311 (which are available to the public, sort of), and constituent complaint calls to city council members, which are currently shrouded in mystery.

311 posting NYC

Originally uploaded by Beauty Playin ‘Eh

According to NYC HPD data obtained by New York vs. Bed Bugs, there were 8,840 complaints and 2,757 violations in fiscal year 2008, as of June 19, 2008. (That means 8,840 people called 311, and of those whose homes were inspected, 2,757 cases were cited as bed bug violations.)

Still, those numbers, as alarming as they may be, are relatively low.

Homeowners never call 311 to report bed bugs. And most tenants don’t call 311 about bed bugs, unless their landlord is such a deadbeat that fuggeddabout calling a bed bug specialist, s/he won’t even call the building’s once-a-month roach-spray guy and have him do a little spray and pray.

And few people call their city council members about bed bugs, though I seriously think we all should, now that we know they’re actually keeping track of the calls.

I have often cited the incidence of New York City residents visiting the Bedbugger forums and complaining of bed bugs — compared with the extremely small number who tell us they called 311 to file a bed bug complaint — as anecdotal evidence of how much bigger the bed bug problem is in this city than the city’s limited data shows it to be.

And the anecdotal evidence keeps coming from elsewhere too.

Yesterday, Aly Walansky, of the SheKnows A Little Aly-tude blog, blogged about a string of bed bug infestations among her New York City friends and acquaintances:

. . . today I got an email from one of my closest friends…she is actually a friend I almost moved in with last year, and she recently moved to studio in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. Apparently, last night she discovered that her neighbors had bed bugs…and today, she discovered she did, as well.

Sadly, this isn’t even her first time dealing with them. Last year, she had a ferocious experience coping with said vermin at a boyfriend’s home. Matters were made worse when she escaped home to her parents, and discovered some had followed her there.

At the time though, we had chalked it up to the freaky Queens infestation crisis.

My friend persevered, spent a fortune on decor for her new home…and now is dealing with it again. She’s understandably hysterical.

But Aly’s story does not end there.

Not an hour later, I was telling my BFF what the morning’s events had uncovered, and she shared horrible news. (No, she does not have them.) However, one of her good friends does too! Then, I get to the office I am at today, and overhear another person chatting…you guessed it.

So Aly’s friend has had them twice, the friend’s neighbors have them, the friend’s boyfriend and parents had them the last time the friend was infested. Aly’s friend-of-another-friend also currently has them, as does someone at Aly’s workplace.

You might wonder if Aly has a fairly large social circle, but really, if New York has over 8 million residents, and only 2,757 people were known by HPD to have had bed bugs in FY2008 — why that’s about 0.003% of the population! The odds of a single individual knowing such a disproportionate number of bed bug sufferers are quite astronomical.

That is, if the HPD data comes anywhere near approaching the actual incidence of bed bug infestations in New York City.

I think it’s safe to say most people also don’t yet report their infested addresses on the Bed Bug Registry.

So, perusing the 311 stats yet again, I got to thinking: how many different people from New York City came to Bedbugger.com last month?

Without going into too much detail,* I’d estimate, based on Google Analytics data, that at least 9553 different New York City residents visited this site in the month spanning June 14th to July 14th. These are what Google calls “Absolute Unique Visitors,” not folks coming back again and again (as many readers in the throes of a bed bug infestation do).

I think it’s safe to say that many of these are just bed bug-curious. (May they remain only curious.)

Some may be having a bed bug scare. (May it remain just a scare.)

But I think it’s highly likely that a good chunk of the 9,553 are either in the throes of a full-on bed bug encounter, or have reason to think they have been exposed to bed bugs, or have seen an unidentified insect and/or felt unexplained itching or have apparent bite marks, and suspect these are bed bug bites.

I can’t make any claims as to what percentage of Bedbugger readers fall into the “bed bug-curious,” “having a scare,” “suspected or known bed bug exposure” or “full-on bed bug infestation” categories.

However, for what it’s worth, I do note that more NYC residents paid a visit to Bedbugger in the last 31 days than called 311 to report bed bugs in the entire fiscal year 2008 so far (as of June 19th).

They’re not here for the witty repartee, fashion advice, or gossip. Something is making them spend their precious leisure time reading about a blood-sucking insect.

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*Detail, for those who enjoy it: Google Analytics separates NYC into the four normal boroughs and then every “city” in Queens, making this hard to tot up, so I am counting only cities in Queens with more than 9 visitors. In other words, this is a very conservative estimate. I also don’t get data on unique site visits based on geography, so I’ve used the percentage of unique site visits for the site as a whole and adjusted the NYC visitors based on that.Similar Posts:

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This Columbia Spectator article focuses on the personal plight of some folks with bed bugs living near Columbia University. It’s a nice article bound to raise some awareness of the problem. But what interests me is the section citing HPD statistics on bed bugs in NYC.

It cites the city’s HPD stats on bed bugs (which again, do not line up with those provided by other publications):

Seth Donlin, press secretary for New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the city received 1,729 bedbug complaints and issued 437 violations to landlords in the last fiscal year. Community District 9, which stretches from 110th to 155th Streets, was “on the higher side,” Donlin said, receiving 216 complaints and issuing 53 violations.

The Daily News said in December, presumably of the same “last fiscal year” which ended last summer, that

In the fiscal year that ended in June, 6,889 infestation complaints were logged and 2,008 building owners were hit with summonses.

What’s with these numbers? Either the Daily News is wrong, or the Columbia Spectator is.

But even more interesting is the fact that, as the Spectator reports

Donlin added that renters with unresponsive landlords should calls the city’s non-emergency service line at 311 to “start a paper trail” in case the situation must be brought to court.

So a HPD representative actually spells out for a journalist the fact that people do not report their bed bug cases to HPD via 311 unless landlords are not responsive. It’s something you do if your landlord is ignoring your request for help, and then also if you are not afraid of alienating him/her for any reason (as filing a housing complaint might well do so).

Well, we sure knew that. And we know how very rarely people call 311, because we hear from people with bed bugs every day.

And yet every newspaper and their brother wants to tell everyone exactly how many bed bug cases NYC was hit with last year, and cites the 311 stats for evidence of how big or small the problem is.

I want to be clear that this is not a beef with the journalist at the Spectator, but a problem I am having with these HPD statistics (and the NYCHA statistics the Washington Post trotted out) and how well they mask the real numbers of bed bug sufferers in NYC. They make the problem seem quite small, and it is not.

The fact that the numbers are not consistent from article to article merely adds salt to my wounds.

But the real NYC bed bug story is that the city needs to start tracking infestations — and not via a housing complaint hotline — so we know exactly how many people are truly affected. My guess is if that happened, bed bugs would be a much bigger priority.Similar Posts:

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