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Bed bug infestation, landlord not helping!

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Jibba

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Posted 2 years ago
Sun May 30 2010 15:42:59
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Hey guys,

I've been dealing with a crazy bed bug infestation problem at my apartment and my landlord won't help me out at all.

She agreed to pay for half of the cost of it, but when I called and got a quote for around $2k for thermal treating, she decided that was too expensive. I'm living in Tampa, FL and in my lease it says the tenant is responsible for all pest control, and even explicitly states that bed bugs are not the landlord's responsibility. However, this is a complex wide problem and is definitely not limited to just my unit. In fact, the local news station did a story on bedbugs and it featured my complex!

Video here: http://video.tbo.com/m/27507809/battling-bed-bugs.htm

I guess my question is, is the landlord responsible for abating the problem given that other units or maintenance people might bring the bugs with them to my unit? I'm still on the lease at the infested place and am, at this point refusing to give them any more of my money. I gave them a 7 day material noncompliance notice sent certified about the bed bug issue, and a black mold issue and they failed to address either within the 7 days.

I have since moved out and have tried everything I can do to ensure I didn't take them with me, but I'm unconvinced that this will work since I have plenty of items that have potential eggs on them and I could easily miss some.

Do you have any suggestions for my new place, or any legal suggestions as far as my old unit is considered?
deviltown

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Posted 2 years ago
Mon May 31 2010 14:12:00
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I don't have any suggestions, but I'm in the same boat. My landlord says since I brought them in, I have to pay the costs which I am fronting. In NJ if its not a multi unit dwelling, I.e, an apartment complex they r excluded from responsibility unless the bugs were there when the tenant first moved in. I put a deposit on a new apartment, but now I'm not sure I can move for fear of taking the bugs w/me. If u have the dough - I'd invest in a packtite.
landlordlies

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Posted 2 years ago
Sat May 21 2011 9:38:59
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My boyfriend and I moved to a new apartment in April 1st, 2011. Within a few days I started getting these weird red itchy welts that looked a lot like black fly bites. A girl I worked with said they could be bed bug bites that she had suffered from- we thought, no way! After a few weeks of getting bites every few days we started to consider the possibility and started reading up on bed bugs online. It wasn't until last weekend when we saw our first bed bug that we realized we had them.

We called the landlord and she was indignant that the building had never had bed bugs and we must have brought them with us- never mind that we'd never had them at either of our old places. She blamed it on our mattress that was stored at my boyfriend's parent's house, even though they don't have bed bugs (we have slept there many times). The landlord told us that she would get someone in to treat our mattress and that we would have to pay for it. We told her that treating the mattress alone wouldn't solve the problem, since we've seen them in the living room, and asked her to do our whole apartment as well as the building. When we referred her to the Residential Tenancies Act (Ontario) which states the landlord is responsible for maintaining the unit in good repair, as well as our local Public Health department which states that landlords are responsible for pest control, she agreed to pay for it but was really angry about it, and continued to blame us.

My boyfriend was suspicious that they would skimp out on pest control so he stayed home on the day that the landlord's "guy" was coming. He UV treated the mattress (which is not recommended for bed bugs), and the landlord's boyfriend sprayed some pest control spray (nothing on the label that says it kills bed bugs) around our baseboards in the bedroom. My boyfriend told them that wasn't good enough and they needed to get a professional pest control company in to treat our whole apartment and the building, and they told us it would be too expensive and if we didn't like it we could leave. One of our other tenants came out to see what was going on and when my boyfriend told her we had bed bugs, she said that she had bed bugs last year and the landlord gave her the EXACT SAME story about how it was her fault and she had to pay for it. So not only did they lie to us about bed bugs being in the building but they had the nerve to blame us for it.

Right now we are trying to get out of our one-year lease. If the landlord won't agree to let us out, we are going to get a Public Health Inspector to come and have a look at the building and they will issue an order for the landlord to get pest control in here. We can also take them to the Landlord and Tenant Board to get our lease broken since they aren't providing us livable conditions, and they can order the landlord to pay us back for the costs we have paid out (mattress covers, steam cleaners, $100s in laundering and dry cleaning, plus moving costs).

We hope when we threaten legal action and tell them it will just cost them more in the long run that they let us out of our lease so we can just start over somewhere else. We checked http://www.bedbugregistry.com and put up a listing for our building so that someone else doesn't have the same problem. We're going to treat everything we own- launder anything we can, steam clean our wood furniture, freeze things like photo albums and books, and throw out stuff like our mattress and futon. This had been a nightmare for us and we don't want to take any chances of going through it again!!

Our advice to anyone would be to check with your local laws to find out what your rights are. Originally we were just letting the landlord walk all over us until we found out that it's their responsibility to look after it. We got some legal advice as well and that has helped. My work has a legal assistance program so we didn't have to pay, otherwise it would have cost $125 to talk to a lawyer. Some cities have legal aid for those who can't afford to pay for a lawyer. I can't believe some people have leases that state that the tenant is responsible for pests... in Ontario, even if my lease said that, the Residential Tenancies Act would trump it. So check what your state/provincial laws say because that might not be legal! Good luck everyone!
jrbtnyc

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Posted 2 years ago
Sat May 21 2011 11:35:53
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Shouldn't you start a new separate thread for your description, since you're not affiliated with jibba who started this thread.

Note jibba started this thread 11 months ago in May 2010 so that's significantly out of date now.

Of course, on your thread you could include a reference back to this thread if you want to, as someone who had a problem similar to yours.

Make sure to place your thread in the category Bed Bug Woes, same as this thread.

These suggestions by me are subject to concurrence of Nobugsonme the site moderator.
Nobugsonme

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Posted 2 years ago
Sat May 21 2011 14:47:41
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jrbtnyc,

Generally you're right about starting new threads.

In this case, though, since people are posting about what is basically the same problem, I think it's okay to reuse this thread and would not want people to start a new one at this point.
landlordlies

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Posted 2 years ago
Sun May 22 2011 13:24:15
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I just really needed to rant and didn't want to start a new post! Thanks for the tips.
cilecto

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Posted 2 years ago
Sun May 22 2011 14:18:32
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Great, story, LLL.
- The "it's never happened before, so it's not happening now" fallacy.
- The "you're the only one" cheap shot.
- The "we're using something we found on the internet that looks useful, but really isn't" dodge.
And for a change,
- The armed and dangerous bedbugger!
landlordlies

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Posted 2 years ago
Mon May 23 2011 12:43:14
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Thanks! The LL is now dodging our calls. We're going to ramp up the threatening tone of our voicemails and hopefully get her to sign the form releasing us from our lease so we can get the H out of here.
angeles85

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Posted 1 year ago
Thu Jun 16 2011 20:56:07
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Have you resolved the dispute? If you are interested in filing in small claims court, I have some advice for you...
Nobugsonme

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Posted 1 year ago
Fri Jun 17 2011 3:19:33
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angeles85 - 6 hours ago »
Have you resolved the dispute? If you are interested in filing in small claims court, I have some advice for you...

Please don't take this the wrong way, Angeles85, but no one should be taking legal advice from anonymous strangers on the internet, nor from people who are not lawyers.
angeles85

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Posted 1 year ago
Mon Jun 20 2011 14:28:08
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Haha, my suggestion is arbitration. It's good advice, but you don't have to take it!