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Unlike other pests like cockroaches, bedbugs do not play favourites between the rich and poor: they can be found in the cheapest single room occupancy (SRO) hotel or the most lavish hotel room (see traveller review) or private estate.
This said, there are certain factors that have conspired to make the situation in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) especially dire. Ann Livingston, co-executive program director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, a group that spearheaded a 2007 pilot project to treat three of the neighbourhood's worst infested hotels, says the prevalence is easy to see.
"Hotel [managers] will often say 'we don't have them,' but the easiest way to see if a place has bedbugs is to stand outside on a hot summer day when people wear shorts and you can see all the bites. The infestations in some of these places are just so severe, and the people so ill and unable to do anything. Nobody knows what to do."
Bedbugs are very difficult to control in SROs. Because they are so adept at hiding, bedrooms must be completely dismantled, and a trained expert is needed to know where to look. Even when a landlord is willing to get serious about treating blocks of rooms at a time, units can be difficult to access and properly treat, as many residents of the worst hotels suffer from mental illness and varying levels of addiction.
B.C. Housing, which oversees over 5,000 units of social housing in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland alone, has acknowledged the futility of trying to completely eradicate bedbugs from such environments, despite their ongoing efforts to treat rooms where the bugs are found. The non-profit Lookout Emergency Aid Society, which is funded in part by B.C. Housing, states the following:
"...Warmer weather has led to an infestation of bedbugs through the Lower Mainland, and particularly within the Downtown Eastside," reads a March 2006 Lookout policy document found on the B.C. Housing website. "Bedbugs are particularly difficult to prevent, thus management as well as prevention are key."
Because government agencies across Vancouver and B.C. -- including B.C. Housing -- view the bedbug problem as strictly a pest-control issue (there is no evidence that the bugs can carry disease like a mosquito carries West Nile), this means the residual health impacts of bedbugs are overlooked.
"The major challenge with bedbugs in the DTES is with immune-compromised people," says lawyer David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society. "For some people, the bites get inflamed and opened from itching, causing infection. It's indirect, but this becomes a health issue."
From the core to elsewhere
Some of the bedbugs infesting the Lower Mainland are believed to have originated in the DTES, although confirming this fact is touchy at best.
"People occasionally go to the Downtown Eastside and do naughty things," Vancouver's then-chief medical health officer Dr. John Blatherwick told CBC News in June of 2007. "People take them back to their spouses and their spouses wonder where they got their bedbugs from."
One particularly hard-hit neighbourhood has been the West End -- home to many hotels and densely-populated residential housing, supporting a revolving door of local renters and transient international students.
Exterminator Mark Amery, who is a regular visitor to the neighbourhood, explains why the problem is so bad there, and the psychological toll it can take.
"Let's say three separate people in a same rental place find they have bedbugs," he says. "They panic and move immediately, moving all their beds, clothes, furniture into three separate new places in the same neighbourhood. The bugs are in all their stuff, they spread to the new buildings, and they have to live through it all over again."
The Bedbug Registry is a North American website where alleged bedbug victims can share horror stories and report outbreaks. A report to the site in March of 2008 purported to explain what one Vancouver West Ender had to do to be rid of the bugs:
"Several months of ineffective bug-spraying. Landlord doesn't inform new tenants. Bugs have spread to several apartments. I managed to move out after one month stay (and horror-filled sleepless nights). Packed all my property in garbage bags and washed one by one in hot water for several times."
The final word goes to another exhausted and bitter West End resident who provided the following warning:
"Bedbugs in building.... For anyone thinking of coming to Vancouver for the Olympics, my advice is, 'STAY AWAY FROM THIS AWFUL CITY!!!!'"
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