Landlords in Baltimore who rent out single-family homes are not responsible for treating for bed bugs in those homes, even if the “single-family home” is a kind of unofficial rooming-house with fifteen or more residents. As you may guess, the residents may also lack the funds to treat their homes for bed bugs. (Owners of multi-family units are responsible for treatment for bed bugs, though many are finding this extremely challenging, both financially, as well as because bed bugs are just really hard to get rid of.)

Many people in Baltimore, including Mark Adams, who is profiled in this article, attribute the “cause” of bed bugs to their neighbors’ Latino/a ethnicity. And this is where it starts to get ugly.

The bottom line is that if your neighbors have bed bugs and do not get proper treatment, you will probably get bed bugs, and you will not be able to get rid of them.
This is true whatever your neighbors’ ethnicity, country of origin, religion, or economic class.

The real problem here is that no one is required to treat these single-family homes for bed bugs.

Edward Ericson, Jr. writes for City Paper, that

in the southeastern Baltimore City neighborhoods of Butchers Hill, Upper Fells Point, Fells Prospect, and Highlandtown, the [bed bug] trouble has often attached itself to and spread out from de facto rooming houses filled with extended families and working men.

And

The Baltimore City Health Department itself acknowledges the correlation, though not the causation, in a “Bed Bug Response Plan” it quietly released on April 20. “Pest control companies and the Hispanic Apostolate noted the pronounced bed bug problem in the Latino community, perhaps due to travel and frequent relocations,” the plan notes.

Asked during a June 8 phone conversation to expand on that observation, three Baltimore Health Department officials say nothing for several seconds. “I think that’s where we’ve seen a fair amount of our complaints coming in,” Interim Commissioner Olivia Farrow finally says, speaking of the Latino community. But she and others stress, bed bugs are not confined to the Hispanic population.

“Bed bugs don’t discriminate,” says Sarah Norman, chief of the city Lead, Asthma and Injury Prevention bureau. “All they care about is whether you’re alive.”

Anyone who doubts this should spend some time on our Bedbugger Forums. Although most posters are anonymous, you do get a sense of the diversity of ethnic, national, and socio-economic backgrounds represented.

However, let’s leave aside habits of “travel and frequent relocations,” for a moment and consider the fact that the residents of this single-family row-house are likely unable to pay for their own bed bug treatment. They may lack information about bed bugs and how difficult they are to treat. They may not know where to get help (if, indeed, there is anywhere to get help.)

The city rightly acknowledges that the bed bug blame game does not work:

In a four-way telephone conversation on June 8, city health officials explain that fixing blame for a given infestation is effectively beyond the ken of local government. “We do get a lot of bedbugs going from place to place,” Sarah Norman says. “The difficulty is verifying. Do they have some evidence?”

“You have to get into both properties,” Olivia Farrow adds. “It’s a lengthy investigation.”

Add to that gaps in the city’s laws that make the owners of multi-family dwellings responsible for pest eradication, but don’t obligate the owners of single-family houses to fumigate, no matter how many people are living there, and code-enforcement appears to be a non-starter–at least where the Health Department is concerned.

“So the real thing is education,” Norman says. “What we do is we knock on the door and we really try to create a relationship with the neighbors.”

The Health Department is currently trying to snare federal grants that might, if they come through, help at least some of the city’s low-income families shoulder the cost of eradicating bed-bug infestations. “We are hoping to make a national model about how this kind of thing can be done,” Kasameyer says at the June 16 community meeting.

(Emphasis mine.)

That’s good news. Please make it happen quickly.

The bottom line is that — since the cost of bed bug treatment in Baltimore lies with them — single-family home tenants and small-scale multi-unit landlords may need help in paying for treatment. They also need to educate residents and enforce treatment of those single-family homes.

Baltimore clearly needs affordable, effective pest control to be available to everyone.

And when bed bugs are spreading from row-house to row-house, it really could soon be everyone who has them.

Be sure to check out the article, and the interesting link to a map of bed bug infestations reported to Baltimore’s 311 since 2006.

Update (7/2):

Compare this story from ABC: “Southeast Baltimore Infested with Bed Bugs”

What a difference it makes when the focus is on neighborhoods.

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However, the event is being cancelled this year due to concerns about the potential spread of bed bugs.

Coloradoan.com reports,

The event started in 2001 when the city noticed a number of used couches dumped in alleyways or disposed of improperly. The ritual usually happened right around August when leases, especially for college students, turned over.

The two-day event has seen thousands of used couches come and go, with more than 80 percent of them recycled in 2008, Emerson said. About 600 couches pass through during the two days.

“We want to know: Do we still have this problem of sofas being dumped, or have we done enough education?” she said.

With a bad economy, however, the need for a free sofa is likely still there, if not increased.

“I think, with the economy, you may still find that need there, but I also know that to mitigate your house from bedbug issues is extremely expensive,” [Melissa Emerson, community liaison for CSU and the city of Fort Collins] said. “I would hate to see low-income people and students who want a used sofa to have the burden of trying to clear their home of bedbugs.”

The city will offer a free pick-up service on July 31 to those who have unusable couches that need to go to the landfill.

Bravo to Fort Collins and CSU for making this change preventively, before the city and college had a big bed bug problem.

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• Caveat dumpster! Do not take those Brooklyn sofas, Craigslist readers
• If this couch could talk…
• Boston Globe on the second hand furniture “industry” and bed bugs
• Bed bugs at the College of New Jersey

In October 2007, 27 families were housed in Massachusetts motels. The number rose steeply in the last year, as the economy collapsed, many became unemployed, and foreclosures skyrocketed. The number of families sheltered in motels went from just over 100 in May 2008, to 751 families (including 1,000 children) in 39 motels as of June 2009.

This is necessary because there just aren’t enough places to rehouse people right now. But one effect is that people are living in places not equipped for cooking, bringing up children, or other aspects of daily life.

One of the problems people rehoused in motels often face, according to the article, is bed bugs:

The city’s health department is concerned about bedbugs, after complaints from residents and reports from school nurses that children from the [Cambridge Gateway Inn] motel appeared to have suffered bites. Sam Lipson, director of environmental health for the Cambridge Public Health Department, said officials worked with the motel in February to address the problems and have heard no new complaints. But hotel guests might be reluctant to complain for fear of being forced out, he added.

“They should feel confident that reporting the presence of bedbugs won’t put them at any risk,’’ Lipson said.

Of course, bed bugs are a problem now in many shelters as well as in permanent housing of every kind (from subsidized affordable units to fancy condos and mansions).

But the state does need to be accountable for keeping people safe and in appropriate housing.

And people living in any kind of housing should not have to worry they will be kicked out if they report the presence of bed bugs.

You can read more here.

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Mission : To help New Hampshire communities stay bedbug free.

We are a group of community organizers, college and university staff and students, not for profit leaders, local business owners, teachers, health workers, local officials, church members, volunteers, and more.

We come from many different backgrounds, but we all have one thing in common: the desire to help keep NH bedbug free!

And they’re not just talking about it, either.

NH Bed Bugs is currently working to get an affordable housing building with 20 units, Manchester, New Hampshire’s Langdon Mill Apartments, bed bug free.

The NH Bed Bugs website states,

There’s a bedbug infestation at Manchester’s Langdon Mill Apartments, located on West Brook Street. The 20-unit building houses a veritable United Nations, including people from Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia and native Granite Staters. The tenants, the landlord, and the building and health departments have all tried to correct this problem. However, they cannot solve it alone. Our community needs your help.

And wow again: tenants, the building and health departments, and local organizers are working together to fight bed bugs. Simple, but genius.

WMUR reports that

After years and thousands of dollars spent fighting bedbugs in vain, every tenant in the Langdon Mills apartment building will be move out for a few weeks to rid the building of bedbugs and educate residents about how to keep them out.

The tiny creatures thrive on human blood and have made a global resurgence, WMUR News 9’s Jean Mackin reported.

“The tenants have a tendency, if they see a mattress on the side of the road or sofas that are still in good shape, they bring them into the units. The infestation comes in with the furniture most of the time,” said Dick Anagnost, a landlord and developer.

In late July or early August, tenants will be relocated for two or three weeks. Infested furniture in the 20 units will be destroyed, clothing and linens cleaned and tenants will be educated on how to keep the bed bugs out for good.

The city and volunteer organizations came up with the plan after a young mother said she was afraid to expose her baby to the bedbugs.

“Because one individual was fearful of bringing a newborn into that situation, mobilized people to do something,” said Paul Crawford, of the Granite State Organizing Project.

Wow.

So what about throwing out all that infested furniture? We know that furniture can often be treated and kept. However, the NH Bed Bugs website suggests that “severely infested” furniture is being disposed of:

In order to successfully rid Langdon Mill Apartments of bed bugs, we need to coordinate the chemical treatment with the disposal of severely infested furniture and household items, the laundering of all clothing, and the re-supply of new furniture and household items that are free of bed bugs and their eggs. Without a coordinated set of community actions, each individual action will be in vain. Please help.

Who is behind all this? The NH Bed Bugs press page lists contacts at The Granite State Organizing Project and the American Friends Service Committee. These are substantial organizations.

The The Granite State Organizing Project New Hampshire website tells us,

The Granite State Organizing Project includes religious, labor, and community organizations rooted in faith and democratic values. We unite to strenghten our voice in decisons that shape our communities by taking issue-oriented actions. By doing so we broaden and deepen our own organizations and leadership, build community, and promote a just society.

We agree wholeheartedly with the spirit behind this effort; as the NH Bed Bugs website says of the Langdon Mill Apartments project,

Without a coordinated set of community actions, each individual action will be in vain.

That is never more true than when you’re fighting bed bugs.

I look forward to hearing more about NH Bed Bugs and their fight at Langdon Mill Apartments.

And I wish them every success!

You can read more about NH Bed Bugs and the Langdon MIll Apartments project and donate time or goods here. You can see an article and the video from WMUR about the plans for Langdon Mill here.

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• Bed bugs in the news in Chicago; State of Illinois Department of Public Health takes action on bed bugs
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The San Francisco Examiner asked Vandergrift, “How do you gather content for your show?” The answer:

I feel like going more in the direction of whatever is going on in my world. For example, in my next episode … I want to do a whole thing on bed bugs. [My wife and I recently] had a case of bed bugs.

We can hope that episode may appear here in the very near future.

Remember when Marc Maron of Air America Radio had bed bugs, and regaled Breakroom Live audiences with the horrors of bed bug prep and looking for sealable plastic tuubs in the Container Store?

Of course, radio personalities are no different from the many journalists who also have had bed bugs and publicized the tales (these are just some of our articles about journalists with bed bugs).

We are very grateful when people who have the ears (or eyes) of large audiences talk about bed bugs from a first-hand perspective, because this is how those who have not yet had the pleasure of meeting a bed bug can come to understand that the hassles and stress of bed bugs go beyond washing a few sheets and calling “an exterminator.”

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Cambridge News Online reports that

Ms Stephenson says that despite raising the issue with property management and development company Places for People she hasn’t received a response.

She said call handlers for the firm suggested that if left alone the bugs would go away of their own accord.

She claimed they even hinted she might have caused the outbreak herself.

Two errors there:  first, bed bugs do not go away on their own.

Second, when you assume the first person to complain about or notice bed bugs in their unit is the source of said bed bugs, it shows an ignorance of this pest and how easily it spreads.  The Bed Bug Blame Game is pointless: everyone loses.

Stephenson is getting pest control treatment from Environmental Health — that’s not the issue.

Instead, she reports she’s concerned that the building is not dealing with the spread of bed bugs within the building:

“The call handlers kept saying that it was my problem and that I would have to pay for it, and that’s fine, I am willing to pay for it despite being a single mum, but if all that happens and they just come back then what’s the point?

“I’ve heard from three other people in the block, across three different floors, who also have them and it’s made me so ill I’m not sleeping.

It’s very hard to get rid of bed bugs if all infested units are not detected and simultaneously treated.

Cambridge News online also spoke with the management company:

A spokeswoman for Places for People said: “We are aware that Ms Stephenson has a problem with bedbugs in her home.

“Though this is an issue that individual customers are responsible for, we are happy to provide advice on arranging treatment through the local environmental health department, and to assist in any way we can.

When bed bugs are present, it simply is not sufficient to look at the one unit where a problem has been reported or detected. Building management companies need to help coordinate inspections and treatment within a building. At the very least, adjacent and attached units must be inspected, if not the entire building. Other units may need treatment, especially if what Stephenson reports about her neighbors is true.

If other units are infested and are sending bed bugs over, it is immensely frustrating for tenants whether landlords pay for treatment, or — as in this case — pest control is the tenant’s responsibility. It is not enough to put out the bed bug fire in one unit.

Instead of assuming a tenant’s complaints of bed bugs in their unit is an isolated incident, management companies need to get people who are experienced in searching for bed bugs to do some investigating and actually confirm this is the case.

Consider the alternative: in most cases, if bed bugs in your building become very bad, tenants can eventually move.

Landlords are stuck with an infested building. Property managers would do well to consider this fact and take care of their investment property.

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The new building “The Lux”, at 65 Hastings Street, is in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a highly infested neighborhood, and provides 25 transitional housing units, and 67 supported long-term housing units.  And they’ve started baking tenants’ bed bugs.

RainCity is a chartiable organization which provides housing to people who need it.  Their website states,

The men and women who benefit from the services of RainCity Housing are treated with dignity and respect, and are offered a safe place to live, independence and improved quality of life.

Nothing says “dignity and respect” as much as helping people to live without the presence of bed bugs.

The Vancouver Courier reported of the new sauna room, that

Staff take bed bug-infested furniture to a 200-square-foot cream-coloured room with a grey cement floor and four metal troughs. A gas boiler heats water and an electric fan spreads heat throughout the room. Simpson, operations manager for RainCity, wraps infested mattresses, carries them carefully to the ground floor room, cranks the dry heat to 60 degrees Celsius for four to six hours, and watches bed bugs creep from the highest point of an item down, until they dry out and fall off.

It does not replace bed bug treatment for the unit, but does mean tenants do not have to throw out belongings which they may have been asked to toss in the past.

However,

RainCity hasn’t run the belongings of tenants moving into The Lux through the oven before they get set up, but it might do so when the flow of tenants moving in decreases. The nine-storey building provides low-barrier transitional housing with intensive staffing on two floors, and provides apartments for men and women who have a history of homelessness.

In my opinion, it would be best to run new tenants’ belongings through the unit.   Many people will not notice they have bed bugs until the problem is pronounced — especially since many people do not react to bed bug bites.  And tenants with bed bugs can spread bed bugs to others via common areas, and outside of the building (buses, hangouts, etc.).

With construction and consultant costs, Simpson estimates the bed bug room cost $8,000 out of the $22 million it took to construct 92 new social housing units in the Downtown Eastside. Extra money was spent in an attempt to seal each unit. Electrical outlets include flanges to keep bed bugs at bay. RainCity’s maintenance contract with a pest control company continues but in this new building, treating rooms above, below and next to an infested one shouldn’t be necessary.

$8000 out of $22 million?   Peanuts.

And simply sealing each unit carefully from the outset may go a long way to helping prevent bed bugs spreading.

The bed bug sauna idea is attracting interest from public housing provider BC Housing:

Bill Briscall, RainCity’s communications manager, said B.C. Housing is interested in including bed bug saunas at each of the 12 city-owned sites where social housing is planned. RainCity Housing runs shelters, including the controversial HEAT shelters under Granville Bridge, long-term housing, outreach programs, life skills and food services.

The Globe and Mail also reported on the Bed Bug Sauna at The Lux (PDF here).

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Beginning at 2 p.m. EST, on Tuesday, June 23, Protect-A-Bed is inviting the general public to log on to Twitter for a live Q&A session, where they can get instant answers to all of their burning bed bug questions. The nation’s leading provider of mattress protection products has partnered with BedBugCentral.com experts, entomologists Rick Cooper and Jeff White, who will be fielding questions and providing immediate feedback to participants during the discussion.

“The number of bed bug mentions on Twitter right now is right in sync with the recent surge in bed bug conversations taking place all across the board in other online communities,” said James Bell, CEO of Protect-A-Bed. “It all adds up to an incredibly troublesome issue and Protect-A-Bed is committed to educating the public on ways to control the problem before it gets even worse.”

All you need to do is go onto twitter on Tuesday, June 23rd at 2 pm, and post a tweet with the hash tag #PAB.  This will help Cooper and White to see your questions, and also enter you for a prize drawing from Protect-a-Bed (makers of bed bug proof encasements).

By using the hash tag “#PAB” in their tweets, participants’ questions will automatically be added to the queue of questions and answered in the order they are submitted. Participants will also be entered in a random drawing to win one of three prize giveaways, each including a Protect-A-Bed mattress encasement and set of pillow protectors.

Mattress encasements and pillow protectors are one of many bed bug management tools Cooper and White will likely address in their responses during the Q&A session on Twitter. Even before the issue held as prominent a spot as it does now at the national level, the experts have been immersed in the subject matter and have seen the drastic effects the pests can have on both private homes and public establishments all across the country.

“Getting rid of bed bugs is no easy task, but what so many people don’t realize is how easy it is to prevent an infestation in the first place,” said Cooper, co-author of Bed Bug Handbook- The Complete Guide to Bed Bugs and Their Control, which is the only comprehensive text about bed bugs and their control. “We’re hoping Protect-A-Bed’s Q&A will prompt some questions and conversations that get people thinking about ways they can prevent the onset of bed bugs, or at least identify an infestation before it gets out of hand. Jeff and I have a wealth of knowledge to share on this topic and we are excited to give people the opportunity to interact with us one-on-one in a space as popular as Twitter.”

Although we’re happy to say that people regularly get advice from excellent entomologists and bed bug professionals (as well as fellow bedbuggers) every day in our Bedbugger Forums, this seems like a nice opportunity to ask a quick question and get a quick answer.

And I stress quick: if you’re not familiar with Twitter, you have 140 characters per tweet.  That’s it!

If you’ve never used Twitter, don’t let this put you off of participating.  Just go to Twitter.com and sign up.  It’s free and easy.  You might want to join up before Tuesday at 2 pm, so you know you’ll be good to go then.

Once you sign on, you can “follow” people.  You can keep up with their tweets at the Twitter website, or get a Twitter client for your phone or other device.

You might want to follow Bedbugger!

And if you do join Twitter, please give us a shoutout by posting a tweet directed @bedbugger, so I know you’re out there.

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• New mattress encasement comparison test data
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WKOW in Madison reports that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections helps newly-released prisoners get back on their feet by putting them up in motel rooms known to have bed bugs.

Some of the ex-prisoners had been to local hospitals with evidence of bed bug bites.   WKOW notes,

We found out former prisoners have been complaining about bed bugs at the Capitol Motel to the Corrections Dept. since December 2008.

Corrections Dept. spokesman John Dipko says the agency knew about the infestation in some rooms and has been working with motel staff to spray and disinfect rooms.

Unfortunately, piecemeal treatment of individual rooms, in a property with multiple infestations, doesn’t work well.  As WKOW notes,

It’s kind of like a game of musical chairs.

“We’ve moved offenders out of the rooms where we know there are bed bugs,” said Dipko. “There are additional inspections occurring.”

The state’s health department has also inspected the motel. Its inspector found bed bugs — alive.

Dipko says the Corrections Dept. is still paying for former prisoners to stay at the motel and has no plans to cancel its relationship with Capitol Motel.

Bed bugs can happen anywhere.  The key is that once they’re discovered, management must take drastic steps to deal with the problem.

I have a hard time believing that — as paying customers — the Corrections Dept. cannot do more than shift former prisoners from one room to another in a motel that is not getting sufficient treatment for bed bugs.

In cases like this, entire properties often must be treated.

Note to bedbuggers: this story broke after some of the former prisoners’ relatives visited the WKOW television studio with a bag of bed bugs collected in the Capitol Motel.

If you’re having trouble getting your bed bug story heard, that’s one way to get journalists’ attention.

See WKOW’s  Call for Action: Bed Bugs at Madison motel for the rest of the story.

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In September 2007, it was Tabitha Shick and Benjamin Klein.  Then, in December, we heard about Jon Werberg and Helene Mattera, who moved to a semi-gut-reno on East 117th Street, with bed bugs.

Now, in the fifth anniversary “The Hunt” column, we get an update on Mattera and Werberg, who were stuck in their apartment on 117th St. for one year:

… it seemed location was the only thing their apartment had going for it. They gladly left last summer, the day their one-year lease expired.

The $1,550-a-month apartment, on East 117th Street, was badly maintained, they said. They had several bouts with bedbugs, spending a small fortune on laundry and dry cleaning.

They hoped to buy a home — doing so remains “somewhere between a goal and a dream,” Mr. Werberg said — but their priority was to get out. When they left, they took nothing upholstered.

They were relieved to return to the Bronx. They liked the Parkchester condominiums, but they wanted a dog and dogs aren’t allowed, so they found a big one-bedroom rental nearby for $1,350.

Their new superintendent “is the kind of man who dusts outdoor breezeways,” Ms. Mattera said. “He is meticulous to a T. It makes a world of difference.”

Although a meticulous, well-kept apartment has so much going for it, readers need to know that it does not mean the home will not get bed bugs, nor does it mean that the landlord will handle them properly if it does.

Cleanliness does not prevent bed bugs.

And any landlord who has not dealt with bed bugs before faces a learning curve.  Many good, meticulous landlords are not informed about how easily bed bugs spread, and how hard it is to detect them.

The truth about bed bugs is that you can clean like the Dickens and not get rid of or prevent them.

The good news is that it sounds like Mattera and Werberg are done with bed bugs.  Let’s hope they never have this problem again!

Read the update in full here: The Hunt - So Where Are They Now? - NYTimes.com.

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