M'Ville Residents Complain of Slow Response to Bedbug Epidemic

Manhattanville residents have been squirming recently over an unwelcome neighborhood pest other than Columbia: a bedbug epidemic.

Bedbugs are notorious urban vermin. While they do not spread disease, the insects feed on warm-blooded hosts at night, causing an allergic reaction in most people.

“I thought I had a skin condition at first,” said one afflicted resident, who requested not to be named. She and her husband have been dealing with the pests since August.

In their rent-stabilized apartment, located near Columbia’s proposed Manhattanville campus, the landlord is by law obligated to pay for and arrange exterminations. However, due to a lack of “incentive to get rid of the problem,” the couple says their landlord has done little. Though the landlord has arranged for the couple’s apartment to be exterminated four times, including once this past month, the results have been minimal. The bugs merely moved to adjacent apartments and returned later, the couple said.

With their ordeal now in its eighth month, the resident said she is burdened with “enormous stress and anxiety.”

“Everything we own is in a storage unit and with what we do have—it looks like a contaminated zone ... I haven’t sat on my couch since August,” the wife lamented. “Just getting out of the apartment takes twice as long as before.”

While the two are currently thousands of dollars in debt, they said most costly aspects of their situation are not financial. Sleep deprivation, persistent fighting, and a strained social life due to friends’ unwillingness to come to their home or host them in their own apartments for fear of catching the pests comes at an emotional price. “There’s an amazing stigma that adds to the problem,” the husband said.

On top of these stresses, the couple mentioned that they have had to go to hotels to have sex.

The couple said that, though bedbugs are a building-wide problem, most residents are hesitant to say anything. “People began to talk in the building,” though not publicly, the husband said. An ad hoc group was formed to bring the problem to the landlord but the couple says that the landlord was unwilling to improve his efforts. If the problem isn’t resolved the tenants will consider litigation.

The landlord could not be reached for comment.

According to the New York Times, there has been recent spike in reported bedbug infestations. City statistics indicate a jump from zero bedbug complaints in 2002 to 4,638 during this past year, which they attribute to an increase in international travel, bans on pesticides like DDT, and more public awareness.

Seth Donlin, press secretary for New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the city received 1,729 bedbug complaints and issued 437 violations to landlords in the last fiscal year. Community District 9, which stretches from 110th to 155th Streets, was “on the higher side,” Donlin said, receiving 216 complaints and issuing 53 violations.

Donlin added that renters with unresponsive landlords should calls the city’s non-emergency service line at 311 to “start a paper trail” in case the situation must be brought to court.

Columbia, too, has had its fair share of bedbug problems. Infestations were reported last semester in Schapiro and in John Jay in 2006.