Registration is required. The program and registration form is available here (PDF).

The scheduled speakers are Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, Community IPM Extension Area Specialist, and Allison Taisey, Program Coordinator, IPM Resource Development.

Topics will include identification and inspection plus how to answer tenant and customer questions.

Via Cornell Extension’s Community Horticulture site.

Look what we just found on the website of Toronto’s RENT (Resources Exist for Networking and Training):

A PowerPoint presentation on The Toronto Bed Bug Project!

It elaborates on the Project’s goals and current initiatives, the members and structure of the working groups and other good stuff.

I have to concentrate and read it fully, but this caught my eye on a page describing ongoing work:

Development of public messaging campaign to reduce stigma (“anyone can get bed bugs”) and increase awareness to reduce infestations

and this:

Development of Furniture and Mattress Re-use/Donation protocols

Oh no, you know mattresses are not our favorite subject!

We have our work cut out for us, and we’re not even done with the Cincinnati/Hamilton County plan review.

In any case, enjoy.

The Toronto Bed Bug Project

The minutes of the September 10, 2008 meeting of the Toronto Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (PDF) give us the lowdown:

The Toronto Bed Bug Project resulted from a report submitted by Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health to the Board of Health on bed bug infestations in Toronto. The Project consists of a Steering Committee and 7 workgroups with representation from Toronto Public Health, various city departments including Shelter, Support and Housing Administration and external stakeholders. Each workgroup will address a specific issue as it pertains to the issue of bed bugs:

• Health Issues
• Legislative Review
• Education/Outreach
• Community Based Responses
• Bed Bug Control Issues
• Tracking and Monitoring
• Public Messaging

The Steering Committee and the seven Workgroups meet monthly. The Steering Committee reviews the activities and reports from all Workgroups and will report back to the Toronto Board of Health. The Bed Bug Action Steering Committee Report will provide clear direction and recommendations to the Board of Health and Toronto Public Health for the development of a comprehensive strategy to manage bed bug infestations in Toronto.

Bed bugs are currently classified as a health issue, not a health hazard. Classifying bed bugs as a hazard might open up other options and funding to address the issue.

The Project will improve communication by enhancing the City of Toronto’s web page on bed bugs, and by providing fact sheets in more languages. Fact sheets are currently available in Mandarin, Tamil, Somali, Korean, Russian and Bengali. They are being translated into French, Urdu, Arabic, Polish, Spanish, Hindu, Portuguese and Italian. The Project is also developing a public message campaign to reduce stigma (“anyone can get bed bugs”) and increase awareness to reduce infestations.

The Project is collaborating with TCHC on two pilot projects, which will investigate methods to control, reduce and prevent bed bug infestations in their buildings. They are also assisting Solid Waste Division in the development of protocols for managing bed bug infested furniture, such as the mattresses for the new “re-use” centers opening July 2008.

Standardized treatment procedures are being developed for pest control companies and these will be made available on the TPH website as soon as they are completed.

Quite a bit we need to unpack here!  Especially this business of “re-use” centers and mattresses.  We’re going to have to revisit this.  But no Toronto bed bug update can be complete without a mention of Joe Fiorito.

Joe Fiorito and the unbearable sadness of bed bug committees

The Toronto Star’s Joe Fiorito reported recently that Toronto’s bed bug action committee will release an interim report in November. This is something to look forward to.

However, it is unnerving to read the sadness in Fiorito’s bed bug columns in The Star. Consider this:

The lingering truth is that some landlords – Toronto Community Housing is not exempt – remain ignorant, unwilling or unable to deal with infestations.

This column features an extraordinary quote from Rima Zavys, the co-chair of Toronto’s bed bug committee:

In an ideal world?

“There should be services available for free. We need a mechanism for reporting and tracking the spread of bedbugs. We need money for research. Landlords need to know what to do. There needs to be a central number people can call for immediate help.”

And that is all you need to know about any bed bug committee that ever was.

Resources

• Nobugs’ play-by-play account of how the Toronto Bed Bug Action Committee came to be is a must read.
• Joe Fiorito is Bedbugger’s favorite Canadian bed bug columnist.
• The February 2008 Toronto Medical Officer’s report on bed bugs is here (PDF).
• A Toronto Councillor recently announced plans to ask the Board of Health to declare bed bugs a health hazard, in order to guarantee rights of access to infested apartments. Also via. (Yeah, the Toronto City Council certainly seems to be up on the bed bug issues… it was Councillor Paula Fletcher who first asked the Board of Health to report on the problem of bed bugs in Toronto (PDF).)
• Toronto Public Health’s bed bug resources are here.

The Joint Bed Bug Task Force is comprised of the Cincinnati Health Department, Hamilton County Public Health, and Ohio State University Extension Entomology (Dr. Susan C. Jones).

The Joint Bed Bug Task Force members who collaborated on the Strategic Plan are: Camille Jones, MD, MPH; Timothy Ingram, RS, MS; Susan Jones, PhD.; Antonio Young, RS; Chris Eddy RS, MPH; Thomas Hooper, RS; Robert Smith, RS; Bernadette Watson; and Mohammad Alam, PhD.

We’ve chosen to open our examination of the Strategic Plan (a document that we have anticipated all year) by simply citing the statements of the elected representatives and public health officials of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

The statements of government and public health officials are always important. They are predictive. They frame the issues and define the challenges and the terms of success and accountability.

And policies will absolutely flow from those statements, as we have seen with regret in New York City.

In Cincinnati and Hamilton County, the following statements are quoted in the Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan:

Ohio State Representative Dale Mallory stated “This infestation is a major social and economic issue that must be addressed. We are working hard at the state level to help address this issue. I have met with the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Agriculture, and state elected officials. We are looking forward to helping resolve this problem.”

Cincinnati Councilman Chris Monzel said “The necessity of including the health department and other city and county departments as well as private and community organizations in this effort is clear.”

Dr. Noble Maseru, Cincinnati Health Commissioner stated “This bed bug problem is like a canary in the coal mine, alerting us to vulnerabilities of our social environment. The Task Force led by Dr. Camille Jones provides guidance to address bed bug infestation and the importance of establishing an essential multi agency network to solve this major nuisance in our social environment. I also commend our state, county and city legislative leadership in their quest to acquire resources which in the long term must be resolved through a citizen, public and private sector collaborative effort.”

Mr. Antonio Young, Supervising Sanitarian for the Technical Environmental Service of the City of Cincinnati Health Department said “We are committed to finding a way to minimize the impact of bed bugs on our community. The southwestern area of Ohio appears to be experiencing what the rest of the state may expect in the near future. The important work that the Task Force and political representatives do in this region, if carefully done, may serve as a model in addressing this formidable quality of life issue elsewhere”.

You know what else is interesting about Cincinnati/Hamilton County? When Ohio State Representative Dale Mallory convened an emergency meeting (yes, an emergency meeting) on January 18, 2008, following two previous town hall meetings, well, let’s quote in full:

Participants in the meeting included Representative Dale Mallory, Representative Michelle Schneider, Senator Bob Shuler, Cincinnati Councilman Chris Monzel, County Commissioner Todd Portune, Cincinnati Health Commissioner Dr. Noble Maseru, Hamilton County Health Commissioner Mr. Timothy Ingram, Dr. O’Dell Owens, Ms. Shirley Dunham representing Cincinnati Vice-Mayor David Crowley, Ms. Carolyn Edwards representing Cincinnati Councilman Cecil Thomas, Ohio State University Entomologist Dr. Susan Jones, Cincinnati Assistant Health Commissioner Dr. Camille Jones, Hamilton County Director of Environmental Health Chris Eddy, and Ms. Polly Doran from the Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio. As a result of that meeting, the Joint Health Department Bed Bug Task Force was formed.

We hope that this will finally make clear why we have such a great interest in the genesis and in the work of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force and why we are devoting special attention to the Strategic Plan. From the very beginning the issue of bed bugs had the attention of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County elected and civic leadership. I have to say that we are clearly in awe of their efforts. We congratulate them for an impressive undertaking. The specific challenges of combating bed bugs are certainly great but when there is a consensus from elected officials and public health officials that action must be taken, then there is actually hope of meeting the challenges and helping the people who are struggling.

Our next installment will explore the Task Force’s conception of these challenges.

We’ll set up a download area for our own documents at some point, but for now you should read other people’s.

I especially recommend the two documents which appeared in the special month of February 2008, the Cincinnati Department of Health report and the Toronto Medical Officer report.

You will know hope.

Yep, we’re going to keep talking about these efforts in other cities. We will discuss the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Strategic Plan next and we’ll take a peek at the wonderful work being done in Hamilton County.

Your support is so appreciated. Thank you for participating in our bed bug task force campaign.

is ignoring the anxiety and mental health issues experienced by individuals whose homes are infested. “They will not take responsibility on the health front, period, end of discussion,” she said. “I’m told by the Commissioner of Health, ‘Gale, bed bugs don’t create any illness,’” she said. “They refuse to believe there is any physical harm from bed bugs.”

This is the second bed bug story reported by the New York Sun’s E.B. Solomont, following a report last week on emerging landlord-tenant bed bug litigation in the city. We appreciate the headline of this story, New York Lags in Regulating Bed Bugs.

We have discussed the public health significance of bed bugs and the rationale for a substantive role for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) before.

In a year when the World Health Organization has recommended that cities develop plans to address bed bug infestations and when there are several other public health departments in the United States already taking action, a reflexive and defensive “bed bugs don’t spread disease” policy is untenable.

The New York Sun’s story confirms what we’ve known all along, but comes at the right time as, in preparing to highlight the Strategic Plan drafted by the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force, we were considering the references to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene contained therein.

The following is an excerpt of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan, taken from a section containing information provided by Daniel Kass, DOHMH Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Surveillance and Policy, on bed bug policies in New York City:

The Health department has produced fact sheets about bed bugs. The Health Department will issue a commissioner’s order if more than 20% of units in a building are infested. They can take the case to the Board of Health tribunal, and they usually deal with about 10-15 buildings per year. There is a lot of pressure on the BOH from city council to do more inspections. However, the Health Department says that HPD already does inspections already. The Health Department is resisting pressure to do actual exterminations, and to develop protocols for pest management industry for prevention, inspection, response for homeless shelters, and single room occupancy hotels. The Health Department does run courses for exterminators on bed bug control.

[Emphasis added.]

Mr. Kass did not respond to a request for comment.  Updated Monday:  Mr. Kass states that the above mischaracterizes the Department’s activities.

We do note that the homeless shelter and group living facilities bed bug guidelines, produced by the New York State IPM Program, have been released.

New York vs Bed Bugs advocates the creation of a New York City bed bug task force to develop a comprehensive bed bug control plan for New York City.

[At-large Jersey City Councilwoman Willie] Flood said she disagreed with the ordinance “unless it is scientific. None of us should be voting on this.”

The Jersey Journal, September 26, 2008

I’m not sure, what do you think? It seems to me that the Councilwoman is politely saying, where does it say? Where does it say that bed bugs will spread?

Show me.

Whether it’s your super or your landlord or your local council member and whether the subject is pesticide resistance or the need to inspect adjacent apartments or the fact that, yes, your bed bugs could be coming in through the bathroom, we think having a well-researched set of responses will help. (However, if you find yourself having to tell your own pest control guy what’s what, you have our sympathy and this may not be of help. Nothing may be of help. Except a new pest control guy.)

On the spread of bed bugs to adjacent apartments and floors

1. Public Health Significance of Urban Pests, World Health Organization, p. 141:

Large multi-unit buildings common to poor areas can be very hard to rid of bedbugs. Once bedbugs become established, any control effort that does not include checking the whole building at nearly the same time, along with a coordinated occupant education and treatment effort (as needed), will usually fail, because the bugs will frequently move away from any partially treated and potentially repellent active sites into adjacent rooms. Their movements are generally unencumbered, because they readily move through wall voids and along utility lines, heating ducts, elevator shafts, and laundry and mail chutes.

2. A Code of Practice for the Control of Bed Bug Infestations in Australia, Stephen L. Doggett, Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research and Australian Environmental Pest Managers Association, p. 23:

In any infestation, adjoining rooms and spaces, both either side and above and below, should be inspected.

3. Richard Cooper, entomologist:

Bed bugs will readily move between units in multi-occupancy settings such as hotels, apartments, hospitals, dormitories etc. As a result, bed bug management efforts in multi-occupancy structures should that are limited to the infested unit only are often prone to failure. Often property or facility managers are reluctant to expand the bed bug management effort to other units whose occupants have not yet complained about bed bugs. By notifying other occupants of the facility there is the risk of creating alarm and panic among residents not to mention the damage that could be caused to the reputation of the facility. Notifying occupants of surrounding units is a sensitive and sometimes difficult proposition however; the reality is that failure to do so end up being very costly in the long run.

4. Guidelines for the Control and Prevention of Bed Bug Infestations in California (PDF), California Department of Public Health, p. 3:

Building owners and operators should:

[...]

6. Notify tenants adjacent (next door, above, and below the infestation) to bed bug infested properties. Such notification should specify the presence of bed bugs in adjacent properties, and the need to prepare their properties for inspection and treatment, if necessary, for bed bugs.

7. Instruct the PCO to inspect all rooms and properties adjacent to bed bug infested rooms and properties, including rooms and properties where tenants were relocated.

5. City of Boston Inspectional Services Department, Housing Division, Bed Bugs:

Our Standard bed bug notice of violation also requires that owners inspect all units in the dwelling, and they must treat all horizontally and vertically adjacent units to the infested unit(s).

6. And of course, our own interview with Clive Boase:

Regarding spread of bedbugs within buildings, I now regard this as the norm. An isolated complaint of bedbug infestation from a unit (i.e., apartment, or hotel room) within a building will often turn out be part of a cluster of infested units within that building. We would now say that when inspecting/investigating a complaint of bedbug infestation, that several units to the left and right of the complainant should automatically be inspected, if access is possible.

The dispersion routes seem to vary from building to building, depending on construction. For example, we see some evidence of dispersion from one floor to another mainly in older buildings, where the barrier between floors is not so good. In buildings constructed in recent decades, then the fire-barrier between floors appears good at preventing vertical bedbug movement. However, lateral/horizontal movement between rooms is common, especially where plumbing or other services run from room to room.

Memorably, Clive Boase also observed, in an article in Biologist (PDF) in 2004:

Local dispersion of infestations can occur through the active movement of individual bugs. In one housing block, infestations spread from room to adjoining room at a rate of about one room per seven weeks, with dispersion taking place primarily along plumbing runs.

And then there’s simply what pest control companies do in order to be effective in treating a bed bug infestation. There’s evidence that they not only inspect but also treat adjoining rooms and apartments as a matter of course. In a recent Pest Management Professional series on bed bug management, Bed Bugs: What’s Really Working, the following quotes were especially resonant (from part 2):

“We need 100-percent cooperation of building management,” affirms Scott McNeely of McNeely Pest Control, Winston-Salem, N.C. “When an apartment unit has bed bugs, we always inspect and treat all of the surrounding units. That takes good communication, with and full cooperation of, building management.”

“We’re concerned about all the reports we read regarding product efficacy and bed bug resistance,” adds Stephen Gates, director of technical services at Cook’s Pest Control in Decatur, Ala. “Because of this, we make sure we treat surrounding units of multi-family housing and hotel accounts before we treat the infested units. We don’t want to chase bed bugs from infested units into untreated ones.”

Okay, that was more like eight.

Did some of his poisoned arrows hit their marks? I’m not sure. I think some of them did.

His original comment has all kinds of well-placed bolded statements, but I’m not going to reproduce them here. My fidelity to certain principles apparently only goes so far.

Renee,

My comments shouldn’t disappoint or discourage you. If anything, I admire your passion and desire for a bed bug task force to be created. It’s your belief that the city government should start it that is unrealistic to me.

What don’t you understand about City Hall not being interested in protecting its citizens from bed bug infestations? Yes, Renee, your goal is most certainly pie-in-the-sky, and the details of your own posts are proof of how unrealistic your goal actually is.

You admit that you have no experience in city politics. That I wholeheartedly believe, because if you did you wouldn’t be screaming for City Hall to establish a bed bug task force. I’ve worked as a reporter and editor in several local newspapers in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan for seven years, much of that time covering city politics. As a reporter, I’ve interviewed dozens of Council legislative directors, agency bureaucrats and of course, Councilmembers. I’ve worked on several Council and State Assembly campaigns and I’ve worked for one Councilmember. So unlike you, I do understand how this city works.

That being said, considering how much you repeat (ad nauseum) about how Cincinnati and Toronto and countless other cities’ lawmakers are addressing the issue of bed bugs while our hometown, I would think by now that you’d take the hint and notice the elephant in the room: that New York is not capable of accomplishing things that have been done by smaller cities with less money.

The sad, sad truth is that for all our big city sophistication, culture and cosmopolitan charm, the government of New York City is probably as corrupt as the government of any backwater country you can think of. I’d go as far to say that New York is one of the most corrupt, if not the most corrupt, cities in the United States.

Let’s take a look at Cincinnatti, one of the two cities you gush about so much. Their nine Councilmembers are paid $58,000 a year. In New York we have 51 Councilmembers that are each paid a starting salary of $112,000, and that’s only for newly elected Councilmembers (only one new Councilmember was elected last year, Eugene Mathieu of Brooklyn). How about Toronto? Each Councilmember is paid $96,000 (US$90,000) each year. Long story short, their Councilmembers are paid less than ours, yet those cities’ residents dealing with bed bugs get better government.

Those “small-town rubes” must be laughing their asses off at New York. I have “bed bugs and New York City” on Google Alerts, and maybe twice a week I recieve a news headline from a newspaper outside of New York City making fun of us…labeling our city as a haven for bed bugs.

Don’t you think I want my City Council to step up and do what’s right? When I first started my blog, I was a lot like you, even encouraging readers to write to their repsective Councilmember. I don’t even remember how many Councilmembers I wrote to, urging them to support Gale Brewer’s bed bug bill, I wrote so many. I’m sure those Councilmembers’ interns promptly deleted every e-mail I sent.

I have come up with two possible scenarios (and one nearly impossible one) in which a bed bug task force could be established in New York City:

1) Go Brooklyn: Since Brooklyn appears to be the epicenter of the City’s bed bug epidemic, an alternative would be for Brooklyn residents to petition their Borough President to establish a bed bug task force for that borough. It wouldn’t serve anyone who doesn’t ive in Brooklyn, but the city’s most populous borough would have a bed bug task force. If infestation reports were to decrease in Brooklyn as a result of a boroughwide task force, the other Borough Presidents might be more willing to copy Brooklyn’s model, especially in the year in which their position is up for grabs. What’s more, if a Brooklyn bed bug task force were successful, the Council may actually establish a citywide bed bug task force. Whether it would actually do anything to help New Yorkers is another question.

2) Play the Waiting Game: Wait five years or so or until the bed bug epidemic is so widespread that at least four or five million New Yorkers live with bed bugs, in which case the problem will be too huge for the Council to ignore. At this point, depending on how many millions of New Yorkers will have bed bugs by then, the Council may even go so far as to not only establish a bed bug task force, but also a bed bug Council Select Committee, a Council Subcommittee, or a full-fledged Council Committee, all of which will have much more money and power than a mere task force.

3) Play Ball: Since those of us living with bed bugs are a minority among New Yorkers, technically we are a special interest group. We can form a political action committee (PAC) and raise money to buy candidates. When I say buy, I mean our PAC officially endorse a City Council candidate and donate at least $10,000 to his or her campaign. I say $10,000 because that amount is too large for any Council candidate, even an incumbent, to turn away from. If they are elected, they will vote any way we tell them to. The more we donate, the more influence we will have on them. Once elected or reelected, we guide our newly purchased politician, urging City leaders to place “our guy” on all the right committees that will empower him to do what we want him to do. PACs that cannot afford to contribute that much money to a political campaign can endorse a candidate by offering free campaign labor, with about 50 members of this hypothetical bed bug PAC each willing to commit about four to eight hours a week to pass out campaign literature, put up posters, make phone calls, whatever the candidate needs for their campaign. If possible a bed bug PAC can contribute both free labor and big fat campaign donations. Needless to say, a bed bug PAC will bluntly let the candidate know what we want in exchange for our generous donations. If this sounds strange to you or even slightly illegal, I’ll have you no this is how the labor unions have the Democratic Party wrapped around their fingers, and how the real estate and finance industries have the Republicans under their control.

Pledging votes only works if we have a lot of PAC members living in the candidate’s Council district, or if a sizeable number of our members are willing to falsely register themselves as residents of that Council district. If our “endorsed” candidate doesn’t give us what we want and we feel they didn’t work hard enough, we simply endorse that politician’s opponent in the next election. If our endorsed politician doesn’t establish a bed bug task force because too many more powerful Councilmembers kept him down, the PAC may have to purchase more than one politician. We can also “endorse” a Councilmember that already serves on a committee that can help us, like Consumer Affairs or Buildings, but this will cost the PAC a bit more.

This is all incredibly expensive to accomplish, and political action committees are legal organizations that must follow strict legal guidelines so we will need a legal team to make sure we don’t do anything that lands ourselves in jail.

I think we’ve all done the letter-writing deal, we’ve all called and complained to 311, we’ve done all that, and with few results. In my view, petitioning the Brooklyn Borough president and the local Community Boards in Brooklyn to establish a bed bug task force sounds like the most realistic solution if you really want a task force established somewhere in NYC by 2009.

You said, “So our city and state politics are dysfunctional? Money is scarce? Political will hard to find? We cannot concern ourselves with such persistent problems. We just want New Yorkers to live free of bed bugs.” That’s like saying, “Who cares if I don’t have gasoline in my tank, I’m all out of brake fluid and all four of my tires are punctured? I just want to drive to work!” Not gonna happen.

Without a City Council that is highly accountable to its constituents, and with no political will from those who do have the power to do so, your goal is absolutely unattainable. What is it that you do not understand about New York City?

You keep telling people to “take action” in the form of letter writing campaigns. E-mails to Council members who obviously couldn’t give two shits about our situation. E-mails which are probably deleted as quickly as if they were spam. How about some real action?

I would very much like to start a nonprofit organization that would act as a bed bug task force in New York City. We wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel here, as we would simply mimic what other cities as Toronto and Cincinnati have already accomplished. We could solicit small donations on our blogs via PayPal. If the Council wishes to take credit, they can allocate Council funding for our organization. What’s more important, we can actually give New Yorkers the support they’re not getting from the government.

Unfortunately, state and federal regulations prohibit me from starting a charitable organization with fewer than three people. I truly admire your passion, and I’d love for you to join me and translate that passion into results through a nonprofit bed bug task force for this city.

As you’ve documented quite well on your blog, there are local experts in the private sector who could guide a nonprofit bed bug task force in the right direction. We could even ask the task forces of other cities for advice. Unlike your campaign to get the City Council to establish a bed bug task force, a nonprofit task force is quite doable.

I almost can’t blame the City Council for not caring. For anyone who rakes in a six-figure income, paying a bed bug exterminator $300 a room is no big deal. Neither is throwing out their infested furniture and buying brand new furniture and fancy mattresses. But what about the New Yorker struggling to make ends meet, living on an air mattress and a bunch of stolen milk crates for furniture? That’s who a bed bug task force can really help, cinluding those who do not have Internet access.

So Renee, do you want to take real action and join me in forming a nonprofit bed bug task force, or do you want to keep telling people to ignore my logic and instead spend two minutes on a bullshit letter-writing campaign to city and state officials who couldn’t care less about our problems? In the meantime, you can depress us further with more and more news of cities who are actually accountable to their citizens, and the rest of the country can continue making fun of us New Yorkers.

Look, we gave our city two years to do something about the bed bug infestation, and all they’ve done is publish a pamphlet. It’s not like we never gave them a chance to take action. I can’t wait another two years for the City to stand around and do nothing, and neither can the New Yorkers who read our blogs.

If you’re really interested in taking real action, you know how to reach me.

For the record, the one filed under N for needless to say—or maybe for never gonna happen—New York vs Bed Bugs is not going to be involved in the setting up of a “private” bed bug task force funded via solicited “small donations.”

Council Member Fulop clarifies the issue with regard to tenants who can’t afford pest control:

First, the issue with making tenants pay is that when poorer tenants think they will have additional fees for pointing out bedbugs in the building, history has shown that they will not report the insects to the landlord. The end result is that the insects spread rapidly to other apartments in the building, leading to larger-scale infestations, which will require more frequent and costly control efforts later.

That’s an accurate assessment.

Fulop mentions New York City and our laws assigning responsibility to landlords.

Since we still have bed bugs, perhaps we may as well point out the following.

When poor landlords have to pay for bed bug eradication, history has shown that they will:

• treat infestations serially (treating only the apartments of residents who complain about bites, when they complain), failing to inspect and treat as necessary additional apartments that are at risk for exposure or already infested;
• hire inexperienced pest control companies that are unable to eradicate the infestation; and
• lack the resources and the knowledge to educate their tenants about the prevention and management of bed bug infestations.

All of which will lead to “larger-scale infestations, which will require more frequent and costly control efforts later.”

Did I lose you at “poor landlords”? I hope not. How about cash-strapped, small landlords? There is no doubt that there are small landlords who are utterly squeezed and literally cannot afford a major pest control expense like this one.

And yet, from a control perspective, there is no escaping the essential rationale for making landlords responsible: that they are uniquely positioned to inspect and treat a building-wide infestation. Only such a coordinated effort stands a chance of actually eradicating the infestation.

Similarly, the rationale for municipal and state governments to roll out public education and prevention campaigns is that they are uniquely positioned to educate citizens about an emerging public health concern like this one. Only a coordinated education and prevention effort stands a chance of eradicating bed bugs from our cities.

Intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge the complexity of the problem. The only way out of this mess will be a combined effort of cooperation and shared responsibilities.

UPDATE: September 25, 2008

According to the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City City Council passed Fulop’s ordinance, making landlords responsible for one treatment and one follow-up.

But if the problem persists, the law allows landlords to charge a tenant. The law applies to buildings with two or more units.

Sounds like a recipe for a mess to us.  Score one for the bed bugs.