Nobugs has a great post about the Washington City Paper story about bed bugs in D.C.
Something is happening there that is always astonishing to us (no need to belabor the reasons): inter-agency cooperation, and partnerships with citizen groups, in this case tenant associations, to help a city and its residents cope with bed bugs.
It is encouraging to see the intelligence and compassion of one public health department, in the person of Gerard Brown, the head of the Health Department’s rodent control division.
We’ve always wanted our own city to lead. There is a tremendous opportunity for leadership on a bed bug problem that is getting worse everywhere (everywhere!) and that poses so many challenging and interesting policy questions that demand creative approaches. We could fight rather than continue to allow bed bugs to multiply their entrenched positions. This is honestly what we are doing. Getting the bed bugs out will get harder every day.
Have you written your letter to your city council member yet? I really am begging you to do that now.
Finally, on the difficult landlord/tenant issues raised by this story, I should note that Nobugs makes reference in her post to an excellent comment she wrote here, which we quote in full as it nicely captures the essential difficulties:
I also understand and sympathize with both landlord and tenant perspectives on this issue, believe it or not. I am very sympathetic towards landlords, and would personally argue for assistance for landlords in paying for treatment. I just feel it is impractical — for the reasons I stated — for tenants to be held liable for treatment.
If your reasoning is based on the idea that “landlords should not have to pay for treatment when someone else is responsible for bringing bed bugs in,” this should apply equally to tenants who got bed bugs from a neighbor, don’t you think? Unfortunately, identifying the person to blame really is very difficult in many cases and not practical.
In some localities, another approach is taken: if one tenant alone has bed bugs, they are required to pay for treatment, whereas a multi-unit bed bug problem is the landlord’s responsibility. This appears to be common in many areas of Canada. The problem here is that often the first person to notice or complain about bed bugs is not the first person in the building to have them. And again, the incentive is to put off complaining until someone else does, thus spreading the problem further. It can be very hard to see who is doing this, when they’re doing it; identifying and evicting such tenants is not necessarily possible.
Another law applies in Jersey City: landlords there must pay for two and only two treatments. If a bed bug issue persists after the second treatment, tenants then have to kick in and pay. Again, I see this as setting up a bad situation: many bed bug cases take more than two spray treatments to abate.
If a tenant gets those two treatments and the problem does not go away, they either have to choose to continue treatment and pay for it themselves, or ignore the problem. Evicting those who choose not to treat is not easy. It might take a long time before it was visually obvious that the apartment was still infested. Many tenants would move out rather than deal with the problem. Many would also put up with it whether by choice or necessity (lack of ability to pay). Meanwhile, the problem spreads.
In Jersey City, if tenant #2 has bed bugs and does not notice or report them, bed bugs can keep going over to tenant #1 (who did report and got treatment). So tenant #1 will have to pay even though they cooperated and tried to solve the problem. If tenant #2 continues to have a problem which is not detected or reported, tenant #1 may continue paying for treatments indefinitely.
I understand your response is to evict the non-reporting tenant, but we often hear of serious bed bug cases that go undetected or unreported. Unless careful inspections are carried out of the whole building, regularly, there’s no way to be sure the problem is not coming from elsewhere in the building. Careful human inspections take hours per unit, we are told. Dog inspections are a possibility but few landlords seem to be doing this proactively.
As for the NYC situation, landlords often cannot adjust rent — it is my understanding that most apartments under $2000 are rent stabilized, and the rent can only go up a certain amount per year. There’s an allowance for improvements (eg if landlord puts in a new appliance, rent can be raised), but I doubt this extends to services like pest control. (I stress I am not an expert on that.)
And as for avoiding slumlords, sadly, we have a housing shortage here in nyc, and prospective tenants really do not have a lot of choices. It also is quite difficult to identify which buildings have had bed bug infestations, and how well or poorly the landlord has responded to these.
I apologize for going on again, at such length, but these are obviously complex issues. I think it is important for us to all to continue to think carefully about the possible ramifications of different bed bug policies, and not to oversimplify them. We have to recognize that no policy is perfect, and have to balance ideals and practicality as best we can.
These pages may be of related interest:
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Thanks, Renee!
The apparent inter-agency + non-governmental organization cooperation here is impressive, as is the enthusiasm for bed bugs by someone whose job wasn’t already apparently defined as such (Gerard Brown).
This is a great discussion about the difficulties of the accountability aspect of control of bed bugs in a multi-dwelling setting but it really applies to any pest that has capability of spreading in a building. For sompe pests, such as mice or rats, the point of entry is into the building directly from ground level .. such as mice and rats, therefore the landlord takes primary responsibilty to ensure that reasonable preventive measures are in place. This is very often overlooked but in the case of rodents, prevention is a lot cheaper than control when the infestation has spread to an entire building. In the case of bed bugs the entry is far more complex, but hte landlord can do a lot to help.. especially through education and reasonable precautionary measures such as appropriate disposal of infested items such as mattresses when that has happened (not always necessary to get rid of mattresses or other furniture). The difficulty of who is responsible and accuntable can create polarization and anger so easily. I think responsible landlords donot want to be labelled as “slum landlords” who do nothing, but they also don’t want to be on the hook for the problem either. Responsibility for pest problems is shared, but ther is a need to educate landlords to understand, as most do I am sure, that an uresolved infestation hurts reputation and creates a lot of ill feeling, so investment in a good pest management program makes a whole lot of sense. This is a tough problem that involves municipal agencies both in terms of enforcement of by-laws, of support for citizens who need help such as seniors, or disadvantaged individuals or those who have physical or mental limitations, and the landlord needs to understand that it is not an issue of us against them, and tenants needs to understand this as well so if they work together and share responsibility, then the problem can be solved..
not easily.. but that is what it takes.. a joint effort, an understanding of shared responsibility, working with public agencies and hiring qualified competent pest control firms who understand IPM and what it is all about.. We call this IPM Chain of Accountability Program, and in my opionion, call it what you like, but this is what is needed to make things work, and the best success stories are based on this concept, even if sometimes the work is not given the label but happens from common sense of all..
of course the ostrich head in the sand is not going to solve the problem. The bed bugs interest is very narrow and focused and they will do what they do so long as they can.. and the cycle will continue until people work together using sensible approaches. Keep in mind, the reaction to treat an entire building from top to bottom is only a temporary stay from the problem.. it takes a sustained approach.
This “understanding of shared responsibility” is something we very much want to see. And people, and agencies, assuming leadership.