The article, “Bedbugs infest GF apartment complex again,” said twelve units were infested in the 76-unit Cherry Heights complex (at 110 Cherry Street), which houses those over 62, the disabled, and people on low incomes.

The word “again” in the headline referred to the fact that one unit in the building was infested back in March. This suggests that either (a) all bed bugs in the original infestation were not killed and later spread to others, (b) bed bug infestations were present at the time in other units that were not known about, (c) one or more tenants or staff have brought bed bugs in since the March infestation, or (d) all of the above.

The article says,

After the report of bedbugs in March, the affected apartment and surrounding units were treated.

“We felt that we did have it under control. We felt we did everything that had to be done,” [executive dirctor Terry] Hanson said.

From April to July, the housing authority received no reports of bedbugs. But it’s not clear whether this is a fresh case or a lingering one, Hanson said.

It is possible that other units besides surrounding ones were infested at the time. It’s also not clear how many treatments occurred back in March. Most bed bug infestations take more than one treatment to clear up. Some take many more. If tenants do not react to bites, they may not know if bed bugs are gone. The housing authority should therefore not rely on subsequent “reports of bed bugs” before following up with further treatment.

The Grand Forks Herald said the building was being treated next week with pesticide spraying by Ecolab, and that tenants in the twelve units being treated would be asked to vacate their homes for two days during treatment.

I can only hope residents have been educated about how to avoid moving bed bugs to the hotels, motels, friends’ or relatives’ homes where they might stay during that time.

Bed bugs spread easily and one must take precautions to avoid moving them in one’s clothing or possessions. (This FAQ gives some pointers on how to avoid spreading bed bugs to others.)

The Bismarck Tribune also did a brief story on this yesterday.

If you based your assessment of the bed bug epidemic on news stories which have come out most recently from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and now North Dakota, you’d probably be thinking that bed bugs are mostly a problem in public housing.

This is far from the truth. All kinds of people get bed bugs in all kinds of homes. I have a hunch, though, that public housing bed bug stories are more likely to make it into the news.

• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs
• Frankfort, Kentucky Public Housing Authority plays the “bed bug blame game”
• Bed bugs at Berkeley will be treated with… say what?
• Indianapolis Housing Authority vs. Bed Bugs

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As noted on our FAQ about who pays for treatment, the New Jersey Warranty of Habitability says landlords have to keep rental apartments pest-free.

However, things can be a bit more complicated than that.

Although the law says NJ landlords have to pay to eliminate bed bugs from rental units, they don’t say landlords can’t then turn around and charge tenants to cover the costs.

This Journal article details an example of this in action: seniors living in low-income housing, the 240-unit Grandview Terrace in Jersey City, are suffering badly from bed bugs, and have been for three years. Fifty units are now known to have them:

The state holds landlords responsible for extermination in “multi-unit” buildings of three or more apartments - if the bugs are found in two or more units or in common areas. But the state doesn’t take a stance as to whether landlord can then turn around and charge the tenants, said Jennifer Monaghan of the state Department of Community Affairs.

One-and two-family buildings are regulated by a different set of laws that can be superseded by municipal law, but in general the rules are the same: the owner is responsible, but has the right to include a provision in the lease charging the costs back to the tenants.

But despite the law most Jersey City landlords are shouldering the costs, said Charles Odei, director for Jersey City’s Division of Tenant Landlord Relations. “With all the other cases (but Grandview Terrace) we’ve been successful in getting the landlord to pay so far,” he said.

The 284-unit Grandview Terrace has had nearly 50 cases of bedbugs in the past three years, said Steve Lesko, president of Norman Ostrow Inc., which manages the building. He said the building’s tenant board voted in 2006 to charge tenants individually.

“Why should people who don’t have a problem pay for people who do?” he said, adding that the policy tends to prevent false alarms.

That kind of policy, decided by a tenant board or not, just shows an ignorance of bed bugs and how they work. They probably made this decision ignorant of the fact that a large percentage of people do not react to bed bug bites, and so have to have a pretty serious infestation before they notice it. They must also have been ignorant about just how easily bed bugs travel within a building.

And clearly, Grandview Terrace’s management is ignorant about how bed bugs travel:

Lesko said most infestations at Grandview come from tenants bringing the bugs into the building through used furniture or their clothes, not from the bugs moving from one apartment to another.

But tenants disagree, saying they’ve seen the bugs in common areas, and that the critters can easily jump from one tenant to another in elevators.

And charging tenants individually has the down side that many won’t report the problem, causing the infestation to continue to spread.

“Everyone that lives in Grandview Terrace is on a fixed income,” said Robert High, who has tried to deal with the bugs on his own. “We can’t afford it.”

Bed bugs don’t jump, but they do walk, and run.

I am not sure how the building management determined that those 50 cases were mostly caused by bed bugs being brought in from outside.

(Perhaps Lesko has little tracking devices planted on them?)

But I do know this: forcing elderly people on limited incomes to pay for their own bed bug treatment is a good way to ensure the entire building is eventually infested. And that’s not good for owners or tenants.

New Jersey needs to update its housing laws. If tenants are going to be forced to pay for bed bug treatment, then there must be a provision of financial assistance to help them do so. And of course, if landlords are suffering hardship, the government can certainly pass laws to help them pay for treatment too. But skipping or skimping on bed bug treatment is not a good idea.

People need to be encouraged to report bed bug problems, and they need immediate treatment, regardless of ability to pay. It’s in everyone’s best interest that everyone gets good, swift treatment for bed bugs.

Update:

This article, also from the Journal, reports on how seniors in a Bayonne Housing Authority building, Back Bay Gardens, at 535 Avenue A, are suffering with bed bugs, despite treatment.

One tenant there had 10-12 PCO treatments, and has now been free of bed bug bites for three weeks (much too soon to declare victory).

The problem there seems to be that tenants are only treated if they complain about bed bugs — there do not seem to be any routine inspections going on. And when they are treated, the article implies there is a one-month gap between treatments and follow-ups only occur if tenants ask for them:

[John Mahon of the Bayonne Housing Authority] said the Housing Authority provides an extermination service once a month and sends the exterminator when a tenant calls with a problem.

A tenant who had treatment several weeks ago reports continuing to see bed bugs. Why aren’t all the units in this building being inspected, and why aren’t treatments recurring at approximately 2-week intervals, which most PCOs who know bed bugs seem to recommend? Almost no one gets rid of bed bugs after one treatment, since traditional treatments do not kill bed bug eggs, which hatch in approximately 10 days.

This article is disturbing, and a good reminder that simply providing bed bug treatment to residents is not enough; buildings and housing authorities need good bed bug treatment protocols; they need to provide aggressive treatment with follow-ups, and to inspect units adjoining those with infestations even when tenants have not yet detected a bed bug problem.

More on bed bugs in Grandview Terrace, and on the spread of bed bugs in Hoboken, Atlantic City, and the rest of the Garden State here.

• New Jersey legislators pushing to make landlords pay for bed bug treatment
• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.
• landlords talking about bed bugs
• landlord’s duty to tell prospective tenants about bed bugs?

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The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority will show the Health, Environment and Education Committee a presentation on the pests.

Officials said bed bugs are a big problem in the city’s public housing, which is overseen by the Housing Authority.

According to Channel 12, Cincinnati politicians are claiming some success against bed bugs:

The health department says it received 737 bedbug complaints last year, more than 300 in September and October alone. Since then, the numbers have gone down.

Dale Grigsby, Cincinnati Health Department: “It appears as though at least what we’ve been doing for the last 6 months has been effective, but I don’t want to say conclusively until we’ve seen some more data.”

The message not to re-use discarded mattresses and couches may be sinking in. But housing advocates say the bedbug problem is here to stay for at least a while longer.

Surely the work Cincinnati is doing is having an effect.

However, I would not use statistics based on complaints during the last two months as a barometer. It’s my sense that people taking action on their bed bug issues goes down between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. My sense is that people are celebrating and preparing to celebrate. Money and time are going to other things, and they do not want to deal with problems–especially one they may think they can deal with a bit later. I don’t think that –based on fewer calls to the city about bed bugs in November and December–one can declare any improvement just yet. It really is premature.

And a few months isn’t really long enough to assume those treated homes are really bed bug-free. Bed bugs are notoriously tenacious. Even though Cincinnati was helping people discard furniture carefully, and providing information, there is no reason to think existing bed bug cases have been abated and that they have not spread further. It can take months for people who were treated to realize their bed bugs are not actually gone, yet. Rick Cooper helpfully suggests that people wait 55 days after last seeing a bed bug or suffering a bite to declare themselves bed bug free. My own sense is that in a multi-unit building with multiple infestations–and especially possibly undiagnosed and untreated ones–you aren’t really sure the problem is gone for some time after that.

The article also contained a strange estimate of how many would suffer bed bugs:

Charles Tassell, Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association: “It’s going to be one in seven houses by the year 2008 that will be infected. We’re at 2008 and we’re not at that number yet, but we’re going to see it continue to grow.”

On the video, Tassell attributes his estimate that 1 in 7 houses would have bed bugs by 2008 to unnamed “professionals”. I do not recall hearing this statistic before, and I don’t know if it refers to Cincinnati alone or some larger region. I Also assume Tassell means “homes” in particular, and “homes,” not houses. Perhaps a reader will know the source of this statistic.

The Local 12 article did not give any real basis for thinking things were either that bad, or that improved. We can consider the one actual case mentioned in the article:

Joyce Jones has the bites to prove it. When bedbugs showed up in her apartment last fall she asked for help.

Joyce Jones, Stanley Rowe Apartments: “I did everything…I called in a work order. They come in and I tell you what they do. They do this here and say we don’t see nothing.”

Joyce is one of many residents of Stanley Rowe Apartments that are fighting bedbugs. Because of complaints, city council demanded answers from the Metropolitan Housing Authority and health department. CMHA says it’s doing the best it can. The health department says bedbug education programs seem to making headway.

Reading this tells you little. Watch the video. It’s hard to tell exactly what Joyce Jones’s housing inspector did, but her implication is that the inspection was cursory and this is a familiar story to our readers. Some readers tell us they have PCOs, and in some cases housing inspectors, who do very limited “inspections.” While we know bed bugs can live in the baseboards or other places in the room, and in furniture besides beds, some inspections still don’t go beyond looking under the sheets and mattress, and if they do not find a live bed bug, the inspection is over. (Some PCOs and inspectors, readers tell us, don’t inspect at all.) There have been isolated reports from people in NYC of HPD inspectors unwilling to come into apartments after people filed bed bug complaints. Of course, that is clearly not HPD policy and any person making this accusation simply must pursue the matter further with HPD.

Local 12 says Jones is simply using extra bleach in the laundry until someone comes to help. Since Jones lives in the same bed bug-beleaguered high-rise senior apartment building as Samuel Blackmon, the man shown in this harrowing video, where his “apartment that was treated a month ago” was not surprisingly still literally crawling with bed bugs. (The full story was not clear, but that video implied Blackmon’s apartment may have been treated just once, as of October, and that a month had elapsed with nothing more being done.) I would hope inspections in every unit of the building would be very extensive indeed, and that treatments are much more aggressive and regular.

I appreciate the steps Cincinnati has taken, but I would guess they still have a long way to go in fighting bed bugs.  We have not heard anything about monetary assistance for tenants, landlords, and homeowners who need help both preparing for treatment and for covering costs of treatments themselves. 

I hope they will add such assistance to current programs of public education and refuse removal, and make sure everyone is getting proper, thorough inspections and treatment–until their bed bugs are truly gone.

View the brief Channel 9 article by Alyssa Bunn here.

View Local 12’s article here.

• Today’s bed bug conference in Cincinnati
• Urgent: if you’re in Cincinnati…
• Adult home shut down in Monticello, NY with multiple housing violations; 40 beds contained “bed bugs and bed bug eggs”
• Cincinnati: awareness spreading, funds needed to fight bed bugs

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• Allegations of bed bugs affect tourism, according to travel agent
• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• bed bugs in Virginia Beach (again), Brown County, Ohio, and potential health risks
• bed bug news for 2007-11-15

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