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Bedbugs have Schenectady tenants, landlords at odds
City policy splits responsibility by location
Saturday, February 8, 2014
By Kathleen Moore (Contact)
Gazette Reporter  


SCHENECTADY — Tenants and landlords are struggling with a city policy that divides responsibility for bedbugs.

If only one apartment is affected, the tenant must pay all the costs for extermination, Building Inspector Eric Shilling said. But if bedbugs are found anywhere else — even in a hallway — the landlord is responsible for the entire bill.

Extermination isn’t cheap. Exterminators who spray must often return three or more times. Those who use heat often can eliminate the bugs in one day, but the service costs more.

At Superior Bedbug Service, owner Chris Wild said it would cost $850 to treat the typical one-bedroom apartment.

Tenants have been stunned by the prices.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Deb Rembert, the leader of a citywide tenant organization.

She said many tenants would not be able to pay it. Landlords said they don’t think the tenants can pay, either.

“There’s no tenant who can pay that,” said Chris Morris, leader of Schenectady Landlords Influencing Change. “He [Shilling] can say that, but get it to happen? Like blood from a stone.”

Other landlords said they worry tenants are moving out to avoid the bedbugs and unwittingly bringing them to other units. That spreads the problem further.

The longer they wait, the harder and more expensive it is to exterminate the bugs, according to Wild.

“They spread like wildfire,” he said. “If you get it soon, you can get it all. If you have a zillion bedbugs, it’s really hard.”

In those cases, he said, exterminators generally have to return for more treatments.

Both Morris and Shilling said tenants are to blame for most bedbugs.

“By and large, the people we are talking about are people who are not so careful about their surroundings,” Morris said.

Bedbugs are widespread in the Northeast — even hiding in library books, hotel rooms and upscale homes. Morris acknowledged that was true.

“But how many of them go to hotels?” she said.

Shilling said he came up with the rule because many tenants called to complain their landlords wouldn’t pay for extermination.

“We had to do something, and it was common sense, knowing people do bring furniture in from stray places, they visit places that might not be the cleanest,” he said.

Experts agree the two best ways to prevent bedbugs are to never bring in furniture from the curb and to wrap boxsprings and mattresses with special bags. The bags can be purchased from Amazon for $8.

SLIC advises landlords to ban furniture scavenging, according to its sample lease. But Councilwoman Leesa Perazzo said anti-bedbug bags might be the long-term solution.

She suggested landlords be required to have bags on hand to get their rental certificate. The bags prevent infestations by stopping bedbugs from climbing up a bed to feast on an unmoving human.

If bugs are already in the mattress, they will die after the mattress is enclosed by the bag for a year, as long as rips are immediately covered with duct tape, according to New York City health officials.

Perazzo said landlords might see the cost of a few bags as an investment.

“It would prevent or contain an infestation,” she said.

Wild has found his own way of negotiating the argument over who will pay for extermination.

“The tenant never has any money. The landlord needs to protect their asset. Eventually, they’re going to move out, and the landlord is going to be stuck with the bill anyway,” he said. “I always try to get people to split it.”

Morris agreed. Rather than living with bedbugs, she said, tenants should explain the situation to their landlord.

“It seems to me if there was a decent relationship between the tenant and the landlord, at least [the cost] should be discussed,” she said. “Maybe it could be shared.”

Quoted from Patches

landlords have to be careful of who they rent to.....they can't discriminate....but they can

check more carefully of where these renters come from.....reference check can tell where and when they lived before...and how long...

maybe a data base should be set up ...this would prevent the offenders....

bedbugs....???....nasty....and unforgivable...

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The name of the "bed bug" is derived from the preferred habitat of Cimex lectularius: warm houses and especially nearby or inside of beds and bedding or other sleep areas. Bed bugs are mainly active at night, but are not exclusively nocturnal. They usually feed on their hosts without being noticed.[3][4][4][5]
A number of adverse health effects may result from bed bug bites, including skin rashes, psychological effects, and allergic symptoms.[6] Diagnosis involves both finding bed bugs and the occurrence of compatible symptoms.
Bed bugs have been known as human parasites for thousands of years.[7] At a point in the early 1940s, they were mostly eradicated in the developed world, but have increased in prevalence since 1995.[8][9] Because infestation of human habitats has been on the increase, bed bug bites and related conditions have been on the rise as well.[7][10]

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Bed bugs occur around the world.[63] Rates of infestations in developed countries, while decreasing from the 1930s to the 1980s, have increased dramatically since the 1980s.[7][10][63] Previously, they were common in the developing world, but rare in the developed world.[10] The increase in the developed world may have been caused by increased international travel, resistance to insecticides, and the use of new pest-control methods that do not affect bed bugs.[64][65]
The fall in bed bug populations after the 1930s in the developed world is believed to be partly due to the use of DDT to kill cockroaches.[66] The invention of the vacuum cleaner and simplification of furniture design may have also played a role.[66] Others believe it might simply be the cyclical nature of the organism.[67]
The exact causes of this resurgence remain unclear; it is variously ascribed to greater foreign travel, increased immigration from the developing world to the developed world, more frequent exchange of second-hand furnishings among homes, a greater focus on control of other pests, resulting in neglect of bed bug countermeasures, and increasing resistance to pesticides.[10][64]
The common bed bug (Cimex lectularius) is the species best adapted to human environments. It is found in temperate climates throughout the world. Other species include Cimex hemipterus, found in tropical regions, which also infests poultry and bats, and Leptocimex boueti, found in the tropics of West Africa and South America, which infests bats and humans. Cimex pilosellus and Cimex pipistrella primarily infest bats, while Haematosiphon inodora, a species of North America, primarily infests poultry.[68]

Quoted from bumblethru

Tenants bring them in.......tenants should pay...imho

Quoted from sanfordy2

agree...BUT..proving which tenant in a multi unit is 100% impossible unless they are found instantly by the landlord and the chances of that are not likely in any situation...none will speak up for the fear of the financial hit more than anything else id say

Quoted from CICERO

Raise rent on all tenants to cover extermination costs.  $50 increase gets $600 per unit annually.  It's now a cost of doing business.