“What matters is who’s going to get them out”

The fraught terrain between landlords and tenants must be judged a weakness in our efforts to control this ridiculously ruinous pest.

Bed bugs spread while people argue. In cities where responsibilities are not clearly defined, the situation is approaching tragedy. In our city, even where responsibilities are clearly defined, people still delay and negotiate and refuse to do what is necessary. The first gambit of delay is usually an argument about who is to blame.

Jessica at Chicago vs Bed Bugs has a great post on this issue that is particularly good on the difficulty of apportioning blame:

Think about it for a minute. No one could prove any of the theories mentioned above– the business trip, the visiting relative, the neighbor– no matter how hard they tried. Do you think you could find out if there were bed bugs in your hotel room during last month’s business trip? Try calling the hotel and see what they say. I bet they don’t say “Why yes, we do have a bed bug problem!”. Or, try asking your relatives if they might have bed bugs. I bet they don’t say “Why yes, and I brought them to you accidentally!”. Imagine asking your neighbor if his or her apartment is infested. I bet you wouldn’t hear “Yes, it is, and if yours is, too, we should work together to get rid of them!”. You see, it’s impossible to try to figure it out, because even in the most obvious cases, the finger can– and likely will– be pointed in another direction.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who “brought them in” anyway, does it? What matters is who’s going to get them out.

And herein lies the problem, because once bed bugs are in, they are incredibly expensive to get out. We’re talking thousands of dollars, people, many, many thousands of dollars.

Our bottom line must be this: what will incentivize a person, whether tenant or property owner, to report a bed bug infestation and work diligently to prevent its spread and eradicate it? Because anything that hinders the early identification and treatment of infestations is what we need to fight against.  Infestations must be eradicated before they generate secondary infestations.

Ignorance about bed bugs and of rights and responsibilities is at the top of the list of things that don’t help. And, unlike other problems, it is something we can actually do something about. We can only try to ensure that we are all armed with the right information and tools to make the right decisions quickly.

The goal: everyone must know how and why bed bugs spread and why immediate action is necessary at the first sign of an infestation.  This won’t solve all our problems, but it will help.

These pages may be of related interest:

1. The Smiths get bed bugs: HPD’s bed bug course
2. Columbus Apartment Association rolls its own landlord/tenant bed bug rules and regulations
3. The bed bugs on the mattresses that no one is responsible for
4. Caution South Korea: your ID of a bed bug does not necessarily equal ‘first case’
5. Bed bugs make the home page of the NYC Department of Health