Got bed bugs? Bedbugger.com » rhode island

Brown student wants to provide free bed bug treatment to those who can’t pay

nobugsonme — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:19:50 +0000

This article from the Brown Daily Herald at Brown University describes what some in Providence are doing about bed bugs. And what one student would like to do to help those suffering from bed bugs.

In the last few years, bed bugs have been making their way into Providence homes, with little official response. But on Jan. 16, the Rhode Island Department of Health ran its first training session about how to handle the pesky critters. More than 100 people were in attendance, including landlords, students and employees at homeless shelters, according to Dhitinut Ratnapradipa, program manager for the Health Department and a Brown clinical assistant professor of community health.

The Health Department is organizing some meetings for people concerned and wanting to know more about the problem. But the health dept. does not provide pest control services.

Luckily, Brown student Samantha Marder was tuned in to the problem: how do poor people fight bed bugs, especially in Rhode Island, where if only one unit is infested, the tenant is responsible for treatment?

“It was clear that there was no concerted, organized group in Rhode Island that would be taking charge of this,” said Samantha Marder ‘09, who attended the training session.

Marder first heard about Providence’s problem with bed bugs over the summer when volunteering at Hasbro Children’s Hospital at Project HEALTH’s Family Help Desk, which assists low-income families with housing, food, employment and other issues affecting their health.

A volunteer at the Family Help Desk since her freshman year, Marder said until this past summer, the organization had encountered many of the problems that come with low-income housing, like cockroaches, rodents and lead poisoning - but not bed bugs.

Marder not only gets the problem, but she has a good idea how to help.

Marder has an idea for a “low-cost team of exterminators,” possibly staffed by student volunteers.

The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management runs a program in extermination that requires only 24 hours of training, Marder said.

Marder said she wants to create an organization that would cover the cost of extermination even if the tenant is not able to immediately pay. The group would wait to be reimbursed after finishing legal proceedings to hold the landlord accountable, recognizing that they might not ever be reimbursed, Marder said.

The problem with the Rhode Island policy on who pays for treatment is that if a unit is (apparently) the only one infested, the tenant may wait forever to treat. They may have no money, and they may simply wait until they’re not the only infested unit, so the landlord becomes responsible.

This isn’t good for the tenant, the neighbors, or the landlord, financially or otherwise. From a purely practical standpoint, it is a bad rule. Unfortunately, Rhode Island isn’t the only place with such a law. (Many areas of Canada, for example, have similar rules regarding tenants and pests.)

Marder said most families just move out - only for another family to move into the same, bed bug-infested housing.

“A lot of the landlords have little income themselves and want to help but can’t,” Marder said.

Marder’s idea is still in the thinking stage, but I think a non-profit bed bug pest control service is a great idea under the circumstances, assuming issues like liability can be sorted out.

It is unfortunate when non-profits have to provide services that (in my opinion, at least) the government should be ensuring people have access to, but in the short term, it helps solve a serious problem.

So many bad bedbug-fighting practices, so little time

nobugsonme — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:39:16 +0000

Public officials make so many mistakes when it comes to bedbugs, that Bedbugger almost can’t keep up.

Today, an article in the Rhode Island News provides just one example. A Cranston, RI shelter was so infested that 70 residents and housing advocates marched to the State House, seeking the Governor’s help. (You need a login, which takes a minute, but I will quote the most relevant bits below.)

For the third time in six months, a team of exterminators on Monday visited the state’s Welcome Arnold shelter in Cranston in an attempt to eradicate a persistent bedbug problem that has been plaguing the shelter’s homeless residents.

The bedbug infestation had emerged as one of the chief complaints of a group of 70 shelter residents and other housing advocates who marched to the State House last week in an attempt to get the attention of Governor Carcieri and get him to do something about the conditions at Welcome Arnold.

At that session, Noreen Shawcross, the state’s chief of housing and community development, and Clark Greene, the governor’s chief policy aide, promised the People to End Homelessness that a team of exterminators would be at the site as early as Monday. Also promised were new mattress covers to make the mattresses “bedbug proof.”

Dennis M. Langley, the executive director of the Urban League of Rhode Island, the agency contracted by the state to oversee the operation of the shelter on a day-to-day basis, said he believes that the exterminators did what was asked, but “I would not be telling the truth if I said it has been completely solved. This is a difficult group of insects to get rid of.”

So on the one hand, they believed mattress covers would make the mattresses bedbug proof (well, the mattresses, at least would not be a source of bites). They also realized they needed new mattresses, though only in those cases of obvious damage and disrepair. And they realized the difficulty of fighting bedbugs. And nonetheless…

Langley said that in keeping with another promise to the homeless residents, the shelter has purchased 100 used mattresses to replace those that are cracked or that have stuffing falling out. Twenty-six mattresses, acquired from the Donation Exchange, were installed yesterday, and 75 others, purchased from a nursing home, should arrive soon, he said. Some 250 mattress covers have been purchased but have not arrived.

Everything in that last paragraph is so wrong, so very wrong.

Let me get this straight: you realize the mattresses may be the cause of bedbug problems (and I am sure they are infested, though other parts of the room are doubtlessly also infested). So you buy 100 used mattresses? Used mattresses are a notorious source of bedbugs, and you cannot necessarily see the infestation.

And then, adding another layer of stupidity, you install 26 of those before the mattress covers are available? Thereby potentially spreading more bedbugs around?

Arrgghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you people not listening? Used mattresses are a huge source of bedbug infestations. I would never take on a used mattress, having seen the damage that bedbugs can do. And I certainly would not bring one in without a sealed cover.

And if these are standard vinyl covers, they’re easy to puncture (another reason not to take on used mattresses and try and cover them.)

I realize the shelter has little in the way of funds. But that is wrong! The State of Rhode Island is not doing itself any favors by skimping on attempts to eradicate a bedbug problem. Homeless people with bedbugs in their clothing and in their posessions are riding around on your public transportation system, sitting on your park benches, reading in your libraries, and if they’re lucky enough to come across some money that day, drinking coffee in your resaurants and seeking shelter in your movie theaters.

If compassion for your fellow human beings who have fallen on hard times does not motivate you to agressively treat their bedbug problems, and fund this to the necessary degree, their bedbug problems will spread to you. It’s not an if, it’s a when.*

*I hesitate to warn people of this, because it sounds like I think bedbugs are spread by homeless people.

Let me be clear: bedbugs are spread by everyone: homeless people, truck drivers, hipsters, and Ralph Lauren designers.

Bedbugs are spread by people, period.

In this case, however, they will be spread by people who do not have the resources to properly treat them and to try and prevent spreading them. And so in this case, it is everyone’s fault.

Shame on the State of Rhode Island! Shame on all of us for not seeing the problems of homeless people as our problems.

In this case, sadly, they soon will be.