Bedbugs make life a misery
Ottawa Community Housing tenant feels like a leper, has isolated herself from friends
Like many whose homes have been invaded by the revolting bedbug, Michelle Ruthven is an emotional mess.
“Honestly, it has changed my life,” says the distraught woman, who lives in a block of eight townhouses, owned by Ottawa Community Housing, in Mechanicsville.
Ruthven’s situation is baffling because she has had to put up with the pests since September, despite repeated sprayings. The exterminator has been to her home six times — most recently on Wednesday. Thursday morning, her son, who’s been sleeping on an air mattress, woke up to find more bites on his body. Her daughter, who was visiting, was bitten, too. Ruthven figures the bedbugs first came in from an adjoining unit six months ago.
OCH chief executive JoAnne Poirier promises the housing authority will do what it has to do to destroy the pests. It is notifying all other tenants in the building to see whether they have the problem, too. She says there are various reasons why treatments might not work at once, even if they are applied repeatedly. For one, products used to spray for pests have to be “environmentally friendly,” so they might not be as strong as they used to be. As well, says Poirier, tenants often enough fail to take all necessary steps to prepare for a spraying. For example, tenants are asked to wash and dry all clothing, linens and towels to kill any possible bugs or eggs. They are then to store the garments and such in sealable plastic bags until it is determined whether spraying has done its job. Ruthven maintains she did all that work, numerous times.
Ruthven has been told bed bugs do not discriminate, are not a cleanliness issue and can invade any household, whether they are mansions or multiple-dwelling buildings. The bugs have turned up in offices, hospitals, and, last month, at the Vancouver provincial courthouse.
Still, she is ashamed of what she is going through and is exhausted by the worry and work the bedbugs have created. She even considered moving, but soon realized she can’t afford to give up her subsidized unit. She inquired about a transfer to another OCH building, but was told she would need a number of documents, including a doctor’s letter indicating she was under duress as a result of the insects.
She feels like a leper and is isolating herself from her friends. Her close friend and neighbour, Sandra Hamilton, says Ruthven doesn’t want them visiting her in case they end up transporting the tiny, flat pests back to their homes. Hamilton, whose unit was sprayed as a precaution and has remained bug-free, says Ruthven also doesn’t want to drop in on people in case she brings the bugs to them. “She’s afraid to come up and visit me.”
Hamilton says she believes five of the eight units have received at least one treatment.
But, says Ruthven: “I’m the one who has been continually sprayed, and they still show up, somehow. I don’t know if any of my neighbours still have them, and I haven’t said anything to anybody.”
She has thrown out much furniture, including a new couch set that replaced the old one she ditched in September after the initial onslaught. The new set was junked in October when bed bugs infested that one, too.
Ruthven has been reduced to a kitchen table and chairs, a coffee table, an air mattress and bed given by a friend after she threw hers out.
“I’ve been living out of (plastic) bags since Sept. 4 — my birthday,” says Ruthven. The unit beside Ruthven’s was “bombed” by exterminators in early September, she says, the day before she first discovered bedbugs in her bathroom. Infested furniture was removed from the neighbour’s and ripped apart — likely to discourage unsuspecting passersby from hauling it home for their use.
Ruthven suspects bedbugs migrated into her home from that unit. She’s probably right, considering the infestation that appears to have occurred there. David Saunders of Paramount Pest Control, which has never done any work for OCH, says the spraying would not have resulted in a sudden invasion of Ruthven’s home. He says the bugs would have already been present in her unit prior to the spraying, and laying eggs. Ruthven says her body was riddled with red, itchy bumps left by bedbug bites through September and October. Though she saw a bedbug on her bathroom counter on Tuesday, she has only been bitten a few times since fall.
Saunders says what exterminators have to do is scour all units in the building to see if any of them still have bugs or have since got them.
He says there are a number of possibilities why the bedbugs are still in Ruthven’s home despite six treatments: Poor prep work before exterminators arrived, the unit was never sprayed properly, or the bedbugs are coming in from another unit.
OCH now spends about $800,000 a year for all pest control, a considerable jump from the $400,000 to $500,000 it used to spend about five-six years ago. That’s around the time that bedbugs, common in many countries, became an increasingly growing problem in cities across North America. According to one website, reduced pesticide use, second-hand furniture and international travel have contributed to the problem. Poirier says about 1,300 of OCH’s 15,000 units were treated last year against bedbugs. Poirier emphasizes the importance of tenants notifying the housing authority as soon as bedbugs appear to avoid infestations that are more difficult to destroy.