In considering how to reply to Bugged Out, it occurs to me that I don’t really want to and indeed I’ve been putting it off. To be frank, his comments disappointed and discouraged me. It makes me slightly anxious to have to justify what we’re doing. But obviously my previous one-word reply will not do.
Let’s see if I can get through the basics quickly.
There is a resurgence of bed bug infestations in New York City that can only be characterized as an epidemic.
A similar pattern is being seen throughout the country. New York City, however, despite the absence of reliable comparative statistics, is widely regarded as the most highly infested city in the United States.
Every other major infested city in the United States and Canada is developing or has already developed a plan of action to control the spread of infestations.
New York City has not.
In a year when the World Health Organization has recommended that cities and communities develop plans to address bed bug infestations, and in the face of so many public health organizations elsewhere adopting active positions and facing this public health challenge head-on, the official positions of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department of Consumer Affairs are no longer tenable.
Bed bugs are most assuredly a matter of public health concern and improperly sanitized used mattresses are not “the right economic choice” for the poor.
What is there not to understand about what we’re doing here? Is asking that a bed bug task force be formed really such a pie-in-the-sky idea? How so? Other cities in the United States have been fighting bed bugs for so long now that they’ve already made mistakes that they’ve learned from. Think about that for a second. Precious expertise is being developed elsewhere, not here. Consider how far behind New York City is falling in relation to other jurisdictions that are taking action.
New York vs Bed Bugs was formed out of the emotions arising from two separate events. We watched Cincinnati form a bed bug task force and set itself the task of crafting a control plan of breathtaking intelligence and courage. Then the Washington Post delivered a rather unpleasant, but in retrospect useful, kick in the pants by publishing an almost unbelievably bad piece that effectively denied the existence of a New York City bed bug epidemic. Tired of feeling powerless and of criticizing our city’s lack of action from our armchairs plastic chairs, we decided to do something, anything. And so we began our work. I have to say, getting a correction from the Post was fun. It’s been downhill ever since…
It has taken us a lot of time to figure out how things work. We had no experience in activism or politics. We are simply concerned New Yorkers. And, while I am the public representative of our group and I write for our website, I am not its only member, although we are indeed a very small, a tiny group. We are just like you. We know what it’s like, and what it takes, to fight bed bugs. And we want to spare others from gaining this hard knowledge themselves.
There is no doubt in my mind that bed bug solutions, best practices and innovations will continue to develop. Creative and committed individuals around the world, like Australian medical entomologist Stephen Doggett, have already created work of lasting value to us all. There are researchers hard at work in several places in the world. There are also extraordinary New Yorkers doing wonderful work in our city. Going above and beyond in every sense. People like Lou Sorkin and Ray Lopez. Nonetheless, eradicating bed bugs will take much more than the work of industry folks, scientists and generous individuals. This is not a matter to be handled privately, not when there are already bed bugs in public places, not with so large a number of infestations.
The solutions we advocate are not beyond the pale. A public education campaign, subway posters… do you know what a subway poster campaign costs? I did not, so I looked it up! A recent campaign for an, ahem, interesting female grooming product cost $10,000 — that sounds doable, or not?! 
So our city and state politics are dysfunctional? Money is scarce? Political will hard to find? We cannot concern ourselves with such persistent problems. It’s not up to us to solve them before we can advance our objectives. We just want New Yorkers to live free of bed bugs. Because bed bugs impoverish us all; they diminish our hopes and our strength. We all need a good night’s rest in order to tackle the real work of our lives. You have better things to do than incessant laundry. You have work to do, a family to raise, a movie to watch, a life. We know. We all just want to get back to our lives.
So please help us out, okay? Write a letter to your council representative. Call your assembly member or state senator.
Tell them what it’s been like for you, fighting bed bugs. Ask them for a comprehensive solution. Spend two minutes. Ask for a New York City bed bug task force. Incredibly, there isn’t one already. And there may not be one ever unless we make ourselves heard.
We are operating on the belief that this is not an impossible cause. But we need your voice. I ask you please to ignore the negative frame offered by Bugged Out. We don’t need to fix government or poverty before we get rid of bed bugs. We are not helpless in the face of these challenges. We should get rid of bed bugs so that we can be productive and tackle larger problems, so that we can get back to work.
Renee,
My comments shouldn’t disappoint or discourage you. If anything, I admire your passion and desire for a bed bug task force to be created. It’s your belief that the city government should start it that is unrealistic to me.
What don’t you understand about City Hall not being interested in protecting its citizens from bed bug infestations? Yes, Renee, your goal is most certainly pie-in-the-sky, and the details of your own posts are proof of how unrealistic your goal actually is.
You admit that you have no experience in city politics. That I wholeheartedly believe, because if you did you wouldn’t be screaming for City Hall to establish a bed bug task force. I’ve worked as a reporter and editor in several local newspapers in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan for seven years, much of that time covering city politics. As a reporter, I’ve interviewed dozens of Council legislative directors, agency bureaucrats and of course, Councilmembers. I’ve worked on several Council and State Assembly campaigns and I’ve worked for one Councilmember. So unlike you, I do understand how this city works.
That being said, considering how much you repeat (ad nauseum) about how Cincinnati and Toronto and countless other cities’ lawmakers are addressing the issue of bed bugs while our hometown, I would think by now that you’d take the hint and notice the elephant in the room: that New York is not capable of accomplishing things that have been done by smaller cities with less money.
The sad, sad truth is that for all our big city sophistication, culture and cosmopolitan charm, the government of New York City is probably as corrupt as the government of any backwater country you can think of. I’d go as far to say that New York is one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, cities in the United States.
Let’s take a look at Cincinnatti, one of the two cities you gush about so much. Their nine Councilmembers are paid $58,000 a year. In New York we have 51 Councilmembers that are each paid a starting salary of $112,000, and that’s only for newly elected Councilmembers (only one new Councilmember was elected last year, Eugene Mathieu of Brooklyn). How about Toronto? Each Councilmember is paid $96,000 (US$90,000) each year. Long story short, their Councilmembers are paid less than ours, yet those cities’ residents dealing with bed bugs get better government.
Those “small-town rubes” must be laughing their asses off at New York. I have “bed bugs and New York City” on Google Alerts, and maybe twice a week I recieve a news headline from a newspaper outside of New York City making fun of us…labeling our city as a haven for bed bugs.
Don’t you think I want my City Council to step up and do what’s right? When I first started my blog, I was a lot like you, even encouraging readers to write to their repsective Councilmember. I don’t even remember how many Councilmembers I wrote to, urging them to support Gale Brewer’s bed bug bill, I wrote so many. I’m sure those Councilmembers’ interns promptly deleted every e-mail I sent.
I have come up with two possible scenarios (and one nearly impossible one) in which a bed bug task force could be established in New York City:
1) Go Brooklyn: Since Brooklyn appears to be the epicenter of the City’s bed bug epidemic, an alternative would be for Brooklyn residents to petition their Borough President to establish a bed bug task force for that borough. It wouldn’t serve anyone who doesn’t ive in Brooklyn, but the city’s most populous borough would have a bed bug task force. If infestation reports were to decrease in Brooklyn as a result of a boroughwide task force, the other Borough Presidents might be more willing to copy Brooklyn’s model, especially in the year in which their position is up for grabs. What’s more, if a Brooklyn bed bug task force were successful, the Council may actually establish a citywide bed bug task force. Whether it would actually do anything to help New Yorkers is another question.
2) Play the Waiting Game: Wait five years or so or until the bed bug epidemic is so widespread that at least four or five million New Yorkers live with bed bugs, in which case the problem will be too huge for the Council to ignore. At this point, depending on how many millions of New Yorkers will have bed bugs by then, the Council may even go so far as to not only establish a bed bug task force, but also a bed bug Council Select Committee, a Council Subcommittee, or a full-fledged Council Committee, all of which will have much more money and power than a mere task force.
3) Play Ball: Since those of us living with bed bugs are a minority among New Yorkers, technically we are a special interest group. We can form a political action committee (PAC) and raise money to buy candidates. When I say buy, I mean our PAC officially endorse a City Council candidate and donate at least $10,000 to his or her campaign. I say $10,000 because that amount is too large for any Council candidate, even an incumbent, to turn away from. If they are elected, they will vote any way we tell them to. The more we donate, the more influence we will have on them. Once elected or reelected, we guide our newly purchased politician, urging City leaders to place “our guy” on all the right committees that will empower him to do what we want him to do. PACs that cannot afford to contribute that much money to a political campaign can endorse a candidate by offering free campaign labor, with about 50 members of this hypothetical bed bug PAC each willing to commit about four to eight hours a week to pass out campaign literature, put up posters, make phone calls, whatever the candidate needs for their campaign. If possible a bed bug PAC can contribute both free labor and big fat campaign donations. Needless to say, a bed bug PAC will bluntly let the candidate know what we want in exchange for our generous donations. If this sounds strange to you or even slightly illegal, I’ll have you no this is how the labor unions have the Democratic Party wrapped around their fingers, and how the real estate and finance industries have the Republicans under their control.
Pledging votes only works if we have a lot of PAC members living in the candidate’s Council district, or if a sizeable number of our members are willing to falsely register themselves as residents of that Council district. If our “endorsed” candidate doesn’t give us what we want and we feel they didn’t work hard enough, we simply endorse that politician’s opponent in the next election. If our endorsed politician doesn’t establish a bed bug task force because too many more powerful Councilmembers kept him down, the PAC may have to purchase more than one politician. We can also “endorse” a Councilmember that already serves on a committee that can help us, like Consumer Affairs or Buildings, but this will cost the PAC a bit more.
This is all incredibly expensive to accomplish, and political action committees are legal organizations that must follow strict legal guidelines so we will need a legal team to make sure we don’t do anything that lands ourselves in jail.
I think we’ve all done the letter-writing deal, we’ve all called and complained to 311, we’ve done all that, and with few results. In my view, petitioning the Brooklyn Borough president and the local Community Boards in Brooklyn to establish a bed bug task force sounds like the most realistic solution if you really want a task force established somewhere in NYC by 2009.
You said, “So our city and state politics are dysfunctional? Money is scarce? Political will hard to find? We cannot concern ourselves with such persistent problems. We just want New Yorkers to live free of bed bugs.” That’s like saying, “Who cares if I don’t have gasoline in my tank, I’m all out of brake fluid and all four of my tires are punctured? I just want to drive to work!” Not gonna happen.
Without a City Council that is highly accountable to its constituents, and with no political will from those who do have the power to do so, your goal is absolutely unattainable. What is it that you do not understand about New York City?
You keep telling people to “take action” in the form of letter writing campaigns. E-mails to Council members who obviously couldn’t give two shits about our situation. E-mails which are probably deleted as quickly as if they were spam. How about some real action?
I would very much like to start a nonprofit organization that would act as a bed bug task force in New York City. We wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel here, as we would simply mimic what other cities as Toronto and Cincinnati have already accomplished. We could solicit small donations on our blogs via PayPal. If the Council wishes to take credit, they can allocate Council funding for our organization. What’s more important, we can actually give New Yorkers the support they’re not getting from the government.
Unfortunately, state and federal regulations prohibit me from starting a charitable organization with fewer than three people. I truly admire your passion, and I’d love for you to join me and translate that passion into results through a nonprofit bed bug task force for this city.
As you’ve documented quite well on your blog, there are local experts in the private sector who could guide a nonprofit bed bug task force in the right direction. We could even ask the task forces of other cities for advice. Unlike your campaign to get the City Council to establish a bed bug task force, a nonprofit task force is quite doable.
I almost can’t blame the City Council for not caring. For anyone who rakes in a six-figure income, paying a bed bug exterminator $300 a room is no big deal. Neither is throwing out their infested furniture and buying brand new furniture and fancy mattresses. But what about the New Yorker struggling to make ends meet, living on an air mattress and a bunch of stolen milk crates for furniture? That’s who a bed bug task force can really help, cinluding those who do not have Internet access.
So Renee, do you want to take real action and join me in forming a nonprofit bed bug task force, or do you want to keep telling people to ignore my logic and instead spend two minutes on a bullshit letter-writing campaign to city and state officials who couldn’t care less about our problems? In the meantime, you can depress us further with more and more news of cities who are actually accountable to their citizens, and the rest of the country can continue making fun of us New Yorkers.
Look, we gave our city two years to do something about the bed bug infestation, and all they’ve done is publish a pamphlet. It’s not like we never gave them a chance to take action. I can’t wait another two years for the City to stand around and do nothing, and neither can the New Yorkers who read our blogs.
If you’re really interested in taking real action, you know how to reach me.
Sorry about all the typos and HTML errors in the comment above. I’m kind of running late for work. But my disappointment in City government’s indifference to the hardships of New Yorkers living with bed bugs was no typo. Seriously, the time to launch a private bed bug task force for New York City is now.
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I would just like to point out, in defense of NYC, its excellent NYC Condom campaign and safe-sex PSAs. This tells me that our DOH can do something if only they will.
Renee, thank you for this group and for showing leadership.
Thanks Bklynchica — a bed bug condom like campaign is just the ticket. I’m trying to think about what you’d want to put in those glass jars at the stores…
“If only they will” is exactly right. There is a law creating an advisory board, but no actual board. But people are apathetic and don’t feel there is any point in pressing the government on this, and the government sees no point in moving on this, which is the situation that Bugged Out was deriding above.
Though I often come here, I have never really focused on the politics involved in NYC. It is just beyond my time…..
I would however, state that without a legislative component that defines who does what and who is accountable for what in terms of the total situation, the problem will just not get solved and any success will depend on local measures at the level of property mangement whether this is a small landlord or a large property management corporation. Of course, reducing the reservoirs of infestation helps everyone – but when it comes down to where the rubber meets the road.. good programs of prevention and appropriate action are what will make the difference locally.
I think that there are likely lots of potential partners out there to make this happen. Not easily.. but it can happen with hard work.
It comes down to Education at every level. Education of landlords, of tenants of pest control firms, of supportive agencies.
I think that Bklynchica’s take on this in relation to NYvsBB’s is a bit off. Citizens demanding action is what makes a difference. Renee provides a valuable resource of very high quality that can benefit all the stakeholders… I am reminded of Jane Jacobs whose activism about communities in cities prevented major destructive changes both in New York City and in Toronto… She became the major opponent of some of Robert Moses’ plans in New York and she was instrumental in stopping construction of an expessway in Toronto that would have destroyed many homes and contributed little if anything to communities here in Toronto. We live in an age in which activism for solving problems is facilitated in amazing ways by the freedom of the internet. It is, in ways, just as powerful as the media and cannot be controlled easily by powerful interest groups. The bed bug issue is very “hot” and it needs a holistic approach including upgraded legislation. If we look at health protection historically, such as the passage of Food and Drug legislation around the world – this happened because of poor regulations, and whenever we see failures in this – it is usually tracked to a lack of focus or compromises that weaken regulation. As much as people vie for the free market model of capitalism, regulation and legislation are what help define societies. I am sorry that it descends to that political context, but when millions of people live in a society, in cities and towns, clearly there is a need for rules and for policies to deal with matters of daily life. The bed bug issue falls into this category, and the activism of citizens makes a huge difference.
one last example.. a few years ago here in Toronto, one of the School Board of Trustees voted to give themselves raises in a time of economic hardship in relation to needed programs and supplies in that school district. Parents came to meetings to protest this and the group of elected trustees prevented them from speaking and considered that their decision to give themselves raises was a done deal. A few of the parents decided that enough was enough and they launched a campaign against the trustees. At the next election, every trustee that had voted for a raise was not re-elected. That was the end of their political careers. Only those trustees who voted against the raise were re-elected. It doesn’t always happen like that, but citizens have a lot of power in a democracy if they set their minds to working for positive elements.
The media can help of course. In this case, the stories in the newspapers were like cake and ice cream for the journalists.
Keep trucking along Renee…….. what you do helps………………………