Yes, I know you want to know about the hearing!
It was great!
I’m going to tell you everything but I overdid the sleep is overrated thing this week and I know you want to read a coherent account. For now, I want to share four good things that happened yesterday:
- Jessica is safely recovering. We mentioned her leave from Chicago vs Bed Bugs here.
- Nobugs came to the hearing!
- That little EPA conference thing we mentioned? Well, ha ha, we learned it’s actually a two-day conference, April 14 and 15.
- The hearing was great.
We are so grateful to the City Council, to the Speaker, to the committee members, and especially to Gale Brewer and her staff.
The people who came to share their stories spoke powerfully and I think were heard. The experts were all awesome, even the ones we disagree with here and there!
I was telling the group earlier that some things probably will not sound as good as they did yesterday. For example, Timothy Wenk, a lawyer, said he just didn’t know why New York City didn’t have laws, a bed bug czar… A city of 9 million people. You can’t swing a dead cat in New York City without hearing a bed bug story.
I told you it sounded better in the room.
More later, promise.
These pages may be of related interest:
I settled my lawsuit (only took 2 years), out of court of course, with my former landlord’s insurance company. You can say I did ok money-wise, but juxtaposed against losing my rent-stabilized, very inexpensive, Park Slope home of 25 years, you can say I didn’t make out good at all. Nothing will ever get me my home back. On the date of the first, court-ordered extermination, they had an eviction notice posted on my door. They didn’t think I would see it, cause I moved (ran) out of there. I then ran to the court and answered it and fought for months. I gave up (I would have won with only having to pay about $1 rent) because I knew I could never sleep there again comfortably because they weren’t taking care of any other apartment in my line or next to it (I was the third apartment that had it but it was kept hush, hush so everyone thought I was the first and they wouldn’t believe that the crazy guy above me had it and wouldn’t report it – he didnt’ mind living that way) Did the council talk about “Contructive Eviction” or what goes on in Housing/Tenant Courts? This is the main problem along with the used mattresses, furniture and lack of knowledge on the Exterminator’s part. To this day, black lint isn’t the same and any itch, tickle or tingle I feel makes me “check myself”. This lawsuit was so that I wouldn’t hold my anger in — it was the only way to tell this landlord that you can’t take people’s homes away. So many victims just toss everything, move and lose so much money and what is done with all that inner anger? This lawsuit was to help me stay civil and not want to destroy my landlord further. I know he and the managing agent are probably not too deeply affected by my lawsuit, but yet you never know. When they are in temple on Saturdays I know that G-d knows who they are and Karma will occur. Landlords are using it as a way to get lower rent paying (and even reg. rent paying) tenants out. Sometimes they succeed. They wait as long as they can to take care of the problem and they don’t take care of it correctly. In my case, I went to Housing court to order them to do the exterminations which were a joke. It’s hard to stay involved with this, because it doesn’t help with PTSD symptoms.
Ellyn, I just wrote a long reply and my keyboard died in the middle of it. I’ll try to recreate some of it!
I’m really sorry for your experience and glad it’s over. There was some discussion of the landlord/tenant issues, mostly in testimony from citizens at the end of the hearing. This is one of the most difficult problems we have in our city, and the problems pre-date this bed bug resurgence and are entrenched; there have been recommendations for housing court reform for many years. I don’t expect that anything will change in the short-term. Specifically on bed bugs, more enforcement and improved access to pest control services are obviously key needs. But our city is broke, or nearly so. And naturally, so are many people and many small landlords.
There are some solutions that can be fomented that will help many people, such as social enterprise bed bug control services, and simply disseminating information about rights and responsibilities will cut down on some small fraction of the problem. The larger issues will likely remain for some time.