The Columbus Apartment Association has developed a set of bed bug management protocols and rules. From their website:
In October, the Columbus Apartment Association held several Bed Bug Legal Awareness Forums conducted by Bill Willis of Willis Law Firm LLC. The forums were focused on establishing legal protocol and interpretation of the state and national legislation and provided an insight into understanding the local health code inspection.
The CAA now has an Integrated Pest Management Plan (IPM) and a Bed Bug Free Certification that members can take advantage of and include as part of their lease agreement. The plan outlines how to identify a bed bug and their bites. This Certification and IPM ensure that your apartment has been thoroughly inspected and found to be bed bug free. In addition, your new tenant will be asked to inspect their current dwelling to ensure that it is bed bug free and will not be bringing bed bugs into their new home or your community.
If you recall, last year it was reported that landlords in Columbus were spending 1.5 million annually to combat bed bugs. The lawyer quoted in that story is the apparent architect of this bed bug package, Bill Willis.
The documents are:
- A Bed Bug Free Certification (PDF), to be signed by the tenant before moving in.
- An Integrated Pest Management Plan (PDF), to be delivered to the resident (receipt of which to be attested to, as well as receipt of three university bed bug fact sheets).
- IPM Bed Bug Rules and Regulations (PDF), these cover rights and responsibilities: there is the expected duty to notify the landlord and cooperate with treatment, as well as rights of access, but there is also notice that cost of treatment may be charged to the tenant, including cost of treating other areas if the infestation spreads, and cause for terminating the lease if the tenant’s “actions or inactions” result in infestation, hinder treatment, or if the landlord or pest management professional simply think getting rid of the tenant is the solution to the bed bug problem. Overreaching? Likely to be litigated? More important, as we know, when tenants cannot afford treatment, and expect that they will have to pay, they delay notification and try to deal with the problem themselves. Failure to eradicate and infestations that spread and are more difficult to treat may be the result.
The interpretive rationale for this package of rules is contained in this presentation: The CAA Integrated Pest Management Plan (PDF). A very interesting read; you can clearly see how and why this was put together. The bottom line is probably this, that landlords:
may include in a Rental Agreement any terms and conditions, including any term relating to rent, the duration of an agreement, and any other provision governing the rights and obligations of the parties that are not inconsistent with or prohibited by Chapter 5321. of the Revised Code or any other rule of law.
If you can write the rules, you will.
And yet, this is a difficult, difficult situation. Moreover, at first glance, this looks like a proactive solution. Someone has to draft bed bug management plans for multi-unit rental housing and the Columbus Apartment Association seems to be offering this packaged solution to its members in response to an obvious need.
But there is a lot in these documents that looks like trouble.
Bed bugs spread between apartments and floors and the question of who is to blame for this spread usually cannot be ascertained. I think an argument can be made that bed bugs may spread despite best efforts (best professional efforts) to contain and eradicate. It’s just what they do; they spread. Assigning responsibility for the spread of bed bugs is tricky at best and counter to what should be the organizing principle, and the stated principle, of these “IPM” building rules, namely, that landlord, staff and residents must cooperate to solve a bed bug problem.
I think that a tenant reading these documents may wonder what exactly is going to happen if a bed bug infestation develops. Will they be blamed? Will the landlord treat but charge back the costs of treatment? Will the landlord evict? All those options seem to be on the table.
I think you should read these documents. Tell us what you think.
Previous posts about Franklin County and Columbus here and here.
These pages may be of related interest:
This is a legal maneuver to shift the costs of bed bug eradication back to the tenant.
It has an educational component which is commendable, but requiring the tenant to look up a website on their home computer… makes it much less likely that tenants will actually read the information.
Charging the costs of pest control to a “guilty party” should spawn a cottage industry for the attorneys & entomologists that are paid to litigate the “chicken or the egg” question of who going to get stuck with the pest control bill.
Imagine if we sued the person that “gave us the flu” to finance our health system & you will start to appreciate how complicated it could be to find the source of each bed bug infestation.
Requiring the tenant to conduct an inspection for bed bugs is another serious flaw.
You are asking a layperson to certify that the unit & contents are bed bug free. Even professionals are challenged to perform an accurate clearance inspection without a K9… This appears to be another way to assign blame to the tenants.
I am sympathetic to the landlords plight, but this program will fail miserably… if tenants are evicted & charged for pest control after being held responsible for infestations… how many do you think will line up voluntarily to report an infestation?
Agree, it looks pretty bad.
This is what happens when there is a vacuum in local laws. People step in and start mucking around. More bed bugs for everyone. Cities have to lead because bed bugs are no longer a problem to be handled privately.
That or it’s a lawyer employment stimulus thing, lawsuit written all over it.
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AS a prospective tenant, I think I’d insist that there is evidence of bed bugs prior to move-in and inist that the landlord secure a pesticide company to rid the apt of them. If the pest controller sees no evidence, I’d feel safe moving in.
Do landlords de-bug after every tenant moves out?
Well, yes, CS, in principle, but we all need to be aware that detecting bed bug infestations is not as easy as it sounds in many circumstances. Anyone can detect an advanced infestation, but lower levels may be elusive, especially if the bed bugs are retreating to walls or traveling between apartments through interconnected services (plumbing, heating, electrical). However, yes, having a professional inspection — a human pest controller or a bed bug dog, provided they’re trained and qualified — would be a good step.
Also, just to add to the fun, treating bed bug infestations without a human host present to draw them out during treatments (which are usually multiple treatments) is reportedly very difficult. So in this context “de-bugging” in between tenants may or may not be effective.
Bed bugs are like that. They confound the best efforts of well-meaning people.
The Columbus Bed Bug Task Force is reviewing this issue of landlord and tenant obligations and will produce a “more balanced” document according to its Chair.
I just read this and it seems… and i emphasize “seems” reasonable until one reads the so-called IPM rules and regulations.. These rules and regulations are certainly slanted to enable the landlord to lay “blame” on the tenant. What if the structure of the unit and the treatment caused the spread to the next unit?
I think that this has lots of good content, but if you have a senior or a handicapped person who cannot prepare physically and needs help, is the landlord going to try to evict that person for “non-co-operation”?
There are so many flaws in this …….. I agree with Doug’s comments. An exterminator may say that a unit is free of infestation and be totally wrong…. the nature of bed bugs and their behaviour, and so if an infestation was found, then who would determine if it was the tenant imported or the landlord previous infestation.. Lots of possibilities for distorting the truth and the very way the doc is written, it would encourage people to lie. “not my fault!!”
i think that the overall goal here is very good and much of the content is very well written and covers lots of good points… but if a site has one existing infestation of bed bugs, the onus for other units falls on the landlord..It is as if you went to a hotel and found bed bugs and the hotelier blamed you , even though there had been existing infestation elsewhere. David Cain asks clients to relate their habits so he can determine where they may have “picked up” bed bugs in order to stop the repeated infestation.. We tried that at the start in my organization but it just didn’t go over because no one waned to ask the questions, and eventually because teh spread from within was often the most probable. I think that the threat of eviction should NEVER be part of an IPM plan. that is not what IPM is about. There should be more emphasis in co-operation and support and nuance.. If it comes to actually needing to evict someone…. pretty sad because in those circumstances there is more often than not, a mental health or societal adjustment issue. The landlord should get help from appropriate agencies, and the outcome may ber moving that person to a more suitable residency if there are various other mental health issues involved. One gets a lot farther with support than with threats and this document has a tone of threat more than of support i’m afraid..
This city, Columbus, has a forward-thinking and committed bed bug task force. In other cities I think sadly this is exactly what will happen — landlords seizing control of the rules of bed bug management — and there might be no reasonable counteraction and education effort. The end result will be bed bugs, for everyone. A reasonable expectation is that the privileged classes in those cities will come to see the threat for what it is and will take measures (I read somewhere an argument that this is how the warranty of habitability came to exist, with those in power having recognizing their interest in ensuring safe and sanitary housing conditions) but this will take so long as to be practically useless. This is why we all should have an interest in advocating control methods for bed bugs rather than a re-engineering of how society works. We’ll get one sooner than the other.
Renee, I attended a townhall meeting a few years ago here in Toronto – the one put on by Woodgreen Community Centre, at which a an activist lawyer who specializes in protecting the rights of the disadvantaged, spoke of her view of the obligations of the landlord when a tenant is physically or mentally incapable of preparing the unit for treatment. Of course, in her scenerio, the landlord was often a public housing landlord, but this could apply to any landlord. Her view was that a vulnerable tenant who was incapable of preparation should have support and should be protected from eviction for a reason that is not their fault. This comes down to the measure of what is a good society… one that cares for children and for seniors – the most vulnerable of our population, as well as for anyone who is disadvantaged through no fault of their own. My initial reaction to her views was incedulity as I know landlords are not social workers and do not want to do social work as such or senior care…. However, in reflection on the human rights aspect, as well as the impact that an untreated unit can have on the rest of the tenants, and this is not only bed bugs, it applies as well to major infestations of roaches, I changed my view on this. I see the landlord in these cases as a stakeholder in the IPM Chain of Accountability , so the landlord when a case is identified should act as a facilitator to enable support. This needs to be defined in the specific cases.. contact any family members, or supportive agencies or the health department to get a process of support going. The landlord has this responsibility to protect his own interests by protecting the other tenants, his clients really, from the consequences of the uncontrolled infestation. Sometimes people fall through the cracks if they don’t quite fit into this or that categoy, and often it is because no one has seen fit to ensure that a safety net is their for them. I believe that this is really what it takes.. I see sometimes that community support agencies act ast he facilitators when a client falls into this category, but the landlord is really the most representative facilitator because this is about protecting the asset (the building), and ensuring that landlord’s obligation to other tenants is fulfilled. It may not seem fair in a way to a landlord, but if it is seen as part of doing business and is acted upon like that, then the actual cases will decline.
The landlord should not be alone on this of course but must be supported so that the problem can be corrected. this will then also take ongoing follow-up. It is rare to have tenants who do not want to co-operate, but my experience has been that every situation has its solution, but that it takes trained skilled people in the various aspedts of address this to make it work.
I find that supportive agencies here in Toronto are starting to roll up their sleeves and see how they can get support to help their clients, and one of the rhings they do is invite me to speak to their staff to reduce fear and empower their staff so they can help clients and also protect themselves from taking infestation home. That is the greatest fear..
Sam
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I read the Bed Bug certification but di not see the IPM Introduction letter. Is there such a letter to tenant(s)? Or is it the Plan itself. please advise or forward a copy of such letter.
Thanks
I believe the notice to tenants is the second link above, Integrated Pest Management Plan.
Help I live in columbus and have HAD BEDBUGS for 5 months and altho they exterminate i still have Them…I have bites all over me! What is my recourse??? I told them to move me or take up thge carpet!!
Deb
Deb, you should seek advice from the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force.
the laws seems to lean on the rights of the landlords of course who don’t deal with this problem aggressively because they dont want to spend the money. The law should first of all protect unsuspecting tenants being leased apartments that landlords know are or have been infested with bed bugs . the tenant is allowed to rent the apartment without being informed and then become the “new host” and are forced to deal with a problem that more than likely they would not choose if they are informed. Yet all I see is the landlord being given ways to protect himself and then holding the tenant responsible. Also only professionals should be dealing with this problem thats why it has spread you’ve got Joe and Jimmy with their spray cans that could be toxic or ineffective this is an extremely bad problem yet because it doesn’t spread disease it is been allowed to get out of control. There would be a quick solution and more attention paid to it if it turned out to be disease spreading or deadly.