Bedbugs and Boards: The Steps One Co-op Took When Suspecting Infestation

Under a new protocol for issuing violations, New York City now requires that if a complaint about bedbugs (also spelled "bed bugs") is not dealt with by the co-op or condo board, and residents subsequently report it to the city's 311 complaint line, the building could face violations. An inspector from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) may come and conduct an inspection. If he or she finds bugs, the inspector will issue an HPD Notice of Violation ordering that the situation be addressed.

The order outlines the steps to be followed:

• Where bedbug infestations have been identified, the building owner must inspect and treat units on either side of and above and below the bed-bug-infested unit, use a licensed pest control professional to treat the infestation, and employ a variety of treatment strategies rather than depending on chemical pesticides alone. 

• Where bedbugs persist, or occur in multiple apartments in the same building, the health department will require owners to take several additional pest removal steps (i.e., notify residents that bedbugs have been identified in the building, and develop and distribute a building-wide pest-management plan to all residents).

There are penalties for noncompliance. Condo and co-op boards that are repeat offenders must have a licensed exterminator complete an Affidavit of Correction of Pest Infestation. Boards failing to provide this are issued a violation and required to appear at a hearing before the city's Environmental Control Board, where fines may be levied even liens placed on your building.

Where Is Everybody?

The board of the small, self-managed co-op where I am president agreed it would be a good idea to take immediate remedial or preventive measures in our building. We sent an e-mail to residents explaining the situation and requesting entry to each apartment so that we could inspect it and put down a preventive spray.

And no one responded. Even some board members were MIA.

Puzzled, I conferred with one board member who was equally mystified by this lack of concern by the residents. "I'd think there would be some sense of urgency about getting this done,"he said. I agreed. We sent out another e-mail, this time warning shareholders that unless we heard from them by the next day, we would enter their apartments with the exterminator and the super for inspection/spraying purposes. Now we got a response.

Pregnant Pause

Another issue came up: The wife of a board member was pregnant and concerned, not unreasonably, about the effects of pesticides on her unborn child. This created some tension on the board as we wrestled with what was good for the building overall and what was good for the woman. Ultimately, we came to a compromise involving strong preventive measures in their apartment that did not involve spraying.

It took some doing, but we succeeded in getting all the other apartments sprayed. We then discussed the policy the board should have taken in this incident. Certainly, in the future, a firmer hand needs to be employed. And we need to have a plan to identify and handle the bugs immediately. Clearly, letting each shareholder try and handle the issue was not the most effective method. So we decided to train the residents in preventive work. That would ultimately be cheaper than dealing with an infestation. As it was, the cost of coping with those itty-bitty bugs was in the thousands.

A bizarre footnote to all this: As part of our post-invasion planning, the super provided a 12-page booklet about ways to cope with the bugs that we were going to copy and distribute to the shareholders. As I have done dozens of times in the past, I left the booklet — with my name clearly on it — under his doormat for another board member to review. But before he could pick it up, someone swiped it.

"That is baffling," the director wrote to the board. "Who could have taken it?"

"Maybe it was the bedbugs," replied another director. "They don't want us to know their secrets."

I could believe it.

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