Feature
by Terry F. Meany
Bedbugs are back, and I’m not talking about eavesdropping devices
or the latest stuffed toy for kids. Cimex lectularius is one of
history’s great social equalizers, found in the homes of every
social class on every continent except Antarctica (even bedbugs
are smart enough to stay away from a sheet of ice with cyclonic
storms and the world’s lowest recorded temperature of -128.5° F).
Google “bedbugs San Francisco” and half-a-dozen hotels and guesthouses
show up with less-than-stellar reviews regarding these uninvited
critters. Still more occurrences go unreported or unrecorded.
But is this new group of creepy, nocturnal, noshing colonists a short-lived minitrend or a Black Plague-like invasion? A recent article in The New York Times (“Just Try to Sleep Tight: The Bedbugs Are Back,” November 27, 2005.) seems to suggest that the Big Apple is in the beginning of an entomological epidemic, which compelled one upper Manhattan Riverside Drive co-op to spend $200,000 on an all-building extermination. For that price, I can only imagine they hired New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to negotiate a resettlement package with the little fiends and give them one-way tickets to Paris.
According to Camille Taiara, writing in the December 7 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, bedbugs have gradually shown up at homeless shelters and single-room-occupancy-hotels (SRO) in the Tenderloin, SoMa and Mission districts. Whether they’re moving into Pacific Heights or any of the city’s many-starred hotels is hard to say. It’s not as though any among them is going to advertise a bug infestation along with their $400-a-night room rates. The Central City Extra’s Tom Carter writes that the Tenderloin Housing Clinic found 54 buildings, or 30% of the central city’s SROs, were infected with bedbugs this year alone.
Are bedbugs a big deal? Aside from the gross factor and the bites, no, they’re not. That’s easy to say when you’re not living with them, of course. From a landlord’s standpoint, they can be a double-edged sword. If a new tenant complains about them, how can you prove they were not there prior to move-in unless you had the unit exterminated first? What if the unit is clean, but another tenant is the source? Although bedbugs don’t stray far from their food source—that would be your tenant, unfortunately—they can spread within a building via clothing, luggage and even pipes inside the walls.
Bedbugs have been a nuisance for centuries but have been mostly unknown in the contemporary United States due to past eradications and improved housekeeping. Susan C. Jones, an entomologist at Ohio State University, describes bedbugs as parasites that prefer feeding on humans but will settle for birds, pets and rodents. Bedbugs hitchhiked along with the early New England colonists and were common in the United States until World War II. Insecticides, especially DDT, as well as the regulation of commercial used-furniture sales essentially eradicated bedbugs on this side of the Atlantic for many years. (Consider this the next time you see a free futon or couch sitting out on a sidewalk.) DDT, however, was subsequently banned as a residential insecticide due to claims it caused everything from cancer to hangnails.
Jones states that bedbugs have made a comeback in the United States but are not a major pest at this time. “International travel and commerce are thought to facilitate the spread of these insect hitchhikers, because eggs, young and adult bedbugs are readily transported in luggage, clothing, bedding and furniture. Bedbugs can infest airplanes, ships, trains and buses. Bedbugs are most frequently found in dwellings with a high rate of occupant turnover, such as hotels, motels, hostels, dormitories, shelters, apartment complexes, tenements and prisons. Such infestations usually are not a reflection of poor hygiene or bad housekeeping,” she writes.
Who better to offer a bird’s eye view of bedbugs than Pest Control Technology magazine? Its 2004 survey of more than 150 pest-control companies found bedbugs in 35 states, along with increased calls for their extermination. Other reports have found bedbugs in a total of 43 states. Let’s put this in some perspective before believing life is imitating 1950s sci-fi movies, featuring ant or killer-bee invasions. In 2002, two bedbug violations were issued in New York City. In 2003, 16 were issued, and for 2005 there were over 400 violations. That’s a statistically huge increase in three years, but there are over 70,000 hotel rooms in the city, plus rooming houses and flops that never quite make the advertising pages of Conde Nast Traveler. Martha Craft of Orkin—the national extermination company—reported that Orkin associates responded to 390 cases of bedbugs in all of 2003, hardly life-threatening numbers.
Scott Nakamura of the San Francisco Department of Public Health says, “We have received 123 complaints for bedbugs this year. We are on pace to match last year’s count of 126 complaints. The vast majority of the reports are in SRO and residential hotels.” (With that said, the department does plan to convene a bedbug summit this spring.)
So, basically, out of a population approaching 750,000 people living in about 350,000 households, bedbugs are found about as often as a Saturday-night parking space in the Castro. Peel back this statistical onion a bit further: how many people are actually the transporters here? One guy with a dozen shopping bags, bedding down at several shelters over the summer, could be carting along entire families of bedbugs. An infested mattress improperly disposed of on the street and carried into one of your units could make you scramble for an exterminator. It isn’t as though everyone passing through SFO on a return trip from abroad is harboring bedbugs.
Extermination brings a host of issues you do not want to handle. Female bedbugs lay sticky, hard-to-remove eggs every day—hundreds during their 12- to 18-month lifetimes. The reddish-brown bugs are around a quarter-inch long, oval-shaped and flat, which helps them live in cracks and crevices in walls and floors, in addition to the folds and seams of a mattress. Carpeting, draperies, window frames and cracked plaster are also favored if the bedding gets overpopulated with a rougher, young crowd of partying bedbugs that force the oldsters out. They can live up to a year without a meal but are much easier to see after they’ve had their fill of blood as they swell up in size. Bedbugs bite primarily at night and hide during the day. Although they are not known to transmit any disease, bedbugs will leave itchy welts and some people do have strong reactions to the bites.
Once bedbugs are discovered in your building, the only way you’re going to get rid of them is through a collaborative effort, working together with your tenants and an exterminator. Simply spraying the bedroom with an off-the-shelf can of “Quit Bugging Me” insecticide won’t do the trick. You’ll need to inform and educate your tenants even if the infestation appears to be limited to a single unit. One starting point is the free “Do You Have Bedbugs?” publication from the San Francisco Department of Public Health online or call the Environmental Health division at 415-252-3800).
After receiving a complaint or after a unit is vacated, and before calling an exterminator, do your own inspection of the unit. Aside from live sightings, bedbugs leave egg cases, old skins, fecal spots that look like black mold and, ironically, a sweet odor as an evidence trail. Inspect every nook and cranny, at least in the bedrooms, and the underside of bed frames, windows and woodwork. Your exterminator will use a residential insecticide and should thoroughly spray all crevices and cracks, including any in floor boards. Several applications might be necessary in order to kill the yet-to-hatch eggs along with the bugs already feeding. Your tenants should receive information about these insecticides in advance so they don’t surprise you later with any legal notices over real or imagined physical reactions to the chemicals. This is especially critical if children are living in the units.
The tenants themselves have some work to do. They need to eliminate clutter, plus launder all bedding, mattress pads, clothing and window coverings in very hot water; then dry everything at the hottest setting; and completely vacuum any infested areas and deposit the dust bag in an outside trash container. UC-Davis’s Integrated Pest Management Program recommends preventative measures such as standing the legs of the bed in containers of soapy water or coating the legs with petroleum jelly or double-stick tape to prevent the bugs from climbing up on the bed.
If mattresses have to be replaced, you and the tenant will have to decide who’s responsible. Regardless of who pays, bear in mind that a nice, clean new mattress can be delivered on a truck full of the day’s pick-up of used mattresses from other customers—used mattresses that can be infested with bedbugs. Be sure to check with your mattress supplier before you shell out good money only to repeat the problem. Tenants should understand that future travel could be a source of bedbugs and to carefully check luggage and clothing before entering the building.
After extermination, repair any wall cracks and caulk seams in floor boards and all wood trim. Regular checks and reminders to tenants of anti-bedbug practices, such as ignoring that free sofa bed near the curb, should keep these suckers at bay.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Terry F. Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is a full-time writer and is the author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, published by Lyons Press. He is cost-conscious but not cheap and knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2006 by the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.