We like Nobugs’ take on the recent struggles of New Jersey lawmakers to define an acceptable answer to the question of who should pay for bed bug treatments.
The laws in New Jersey currently make landlords responsible for bed bug eradication but allow them to charge tenants for the treatments. This motivates an under-reporting of bed bug infestations that increases the likelihood of the continued spread of infestations. Senior activists were first able to interest state lawmakers and now the Jersey City City Council.
What is interesting about the emerging New Jersey picture, in sharp contrast to our own, is that lawmakers are at least actively pursuing solutions to the spread of bed bugs and in so doing, engaging in a public conversation with their constituents and landlord groups. The concerns of landlords need to receive greater attention; we need their cooperation and support.
Landlords usually object to shouldering financial responsibility on the assumption that bed bugs are “brought in” by tenants. Actually, I would say that the most common scenario is an infestation that spreads between apartments and between floors, so that in any given building, some tenants will have “brought in” bed bugs inadvertently (a risk we all share alike in these times), or due to ill-informed behavior, such as picking up furniture from the trash, and many more tenants will have gotten bed bugs from their neighbors. The reality is that the landlord is the one party in a position to put into action a coordinated plan of inspection and eradication, and only such a coordinated plan has any chance of succeeding. A public education effort will go a long way towards ensuring tenants are aware of the potential sources of infestation. And an acknowledgment that it is cheaper to take proactive, preventative actions (education of tenants and pest-proofing of apartments) than it is to treat full-blown infestations, and that it is cheaper to inspect and treat the entire multi-apartment infestation at the same time than it is to treat apartments serially, will go a very long way to eradicating this pest from our cities.
An active interest by legislators is certainly a prerequisite to control. But the very first step is to understand the problem. Everywhere we need to begin by consulting entomologists and pest management professionals. You can’t solve a problem that you do not understand, as is painfully clear in Jersey City, where the City Council believes a single treatment should do it and a need for more than one treatment can be taken as evidence of tenant negligence.
We should be especially careful of the incentives and disincentives in bed bug policymaking. Anything that will encourage people to self-treat or to ignore an infestation until it grows and spreads must be avoided. Still, it is good to see a city grappling with these questions, however difficult it is to see the gaps in information. A public conversation about bed bugs, in any city, can only be good for all of us.
We should also realize that bed bugs in Jersey City—by a process that should by now be completely devoid of mystery—can come take in the sights of Manhattan or Queens, and ultimately set up shop in your conference room, your bus seat, your best friend’s couch. Bed bugs in Washington Heights or Brooklyn Heights or Jersey City Heights… same difference.
We need to eradicate bed bugs everywhere and to utilize a coordinated, cooperative approach.
As Clive Boase recently told us:
[I]f we leave infestations ticking over in certain areas of our cities, then they may bounce back out again.
UPDATE: September 16, 2008
While Jersey City is handicapped by insufficient information about bed bugs—an unwillingness to consult bed bug experts?—New Jersey State Assembly members Joan Quigley, Grace Spencer, and Harvey Smith have clearly done their homework. The bill they’ve introduced, in addition to resolving the issue of who is financially responsible, would also assign the essential educational role to the Department of Health and Senior Services.
These pages may be of related interest:
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