Articles

Fiorito: Bedbugs can be beaten

Published On Fri Nov 20 2009

The bedbug report has finally been tabled, along with its frank and graphic information guide, and the city's board of health met the other day and has made recommendations, and ... hang on a minute.

I was talking to a woman a while ago. She lives in a seniors' apartment building on Yonge St., just south of College. She showed me how the bedbugs had bitten her arms and legs. I was grateful that we were talking outside and not in her apartment.

She said she couldn't sleep, and she was anxious all the time and, as we talked, we were joined by a couple of her friends who said they had all been bitten.

The women told me there had been an anti-bedbug program in their building, run by one of the tenants, and funded by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. They said the program – a methodical campaign of steaming, sealing of cracks, washing of clothes, vacuuming of rugs, decluttering and so on – had worked remarkably well.

But then the money – a piddling ten grand – ran out after roughly a third of the building had been done, and the bedbugs did what bedbugs do when you stop fighting them. They came back hungry, and in force.

There's the rub.

We know how to beat the bugs – the report is good and thorough and detailed, and it lays out all the ways it can be done.

But the researchers and community workers who prepared the report observe that, unless sufficient money is made available now, things will get worse. They want the province to step up to the plate with money and with an enforceable set of protocols.

And so I went to see Reg Ayre the other day. He is, among other things, public health's bedbug point man.

Of the cost of the fight he said, "At the start of the year, we had $75,000." The money, not planned for in anyone's budget, was cobbled together by Social Services; Shelter Support and Toronto Public Health, and it has been spent helping the poorest of the poor.

The money is a drop in the bucket.

Ayre noted some successes: "The private sector gave us mattress covers and bed protectors, and a sleep clinic donated mattresses so that, when we do extreme cleans, we can replace the mattresses."

Extreme cleans take place where there are serious infestations. He showed me a photo. I was reminded of the apartment of Dirty George. Ayre said, "People don't live like this willingly ... there's something wrong."

Over the last year and a half, public health has had 2,266 requests for help, held some 90 seminars and inspected 3,000 apartments.

"We've learned some things. In March of last year, it took us three months to handle one extreme cleaning. Since March we have helped 70 people."

How to clean isn't the problem.

"Bedbugs are a symptom of a larger issue. There are a lot of people living without the necessary supports – the frail, the elderly, those who are living with addiction, those with mental and physical disabilities, people living in crushing poverty."

The city can't solve the problem alone. We need a massive public program, including a way to pass and fail apartment buildings the way we pass or fail restaurants

The province must step up. I remind you of yet another practical and compelling reason: the Pan Am Games are coming. Athletes bring bugs with them, and they also take bugs home.

The time to act is now.