Eight months after first spotting the tiny pests crawling across her desk, Esther Stam’s apartment still has bedbugs.
That’s despite the downtown Hamilton tenant asking the property manager repeatedly to follow the advice of a public health inspector to treat multiple units in the building at once.
Stam said she has also sent over 100 emails to the city, imploring staff to enforce its own property standards bylaw.
“The last eight months are a blur — wasted and consistently back to square one,” Stam said.
“I’m told that the city has done all they can do. I keep getting treated like I’m the problem.”
The bedbugs persist even as public health director Kevin McDonald told CBC Hamilton in February that it’s his division’s priority to eradicate pests “as quickly and effectively as possible.”
The city has never issued a written order for landlord Oliver St. John to deal with the bedbugs since August, when Stam made her first call to the city about them. It has rather opted for less-severe verbal warnings, McDonald confirmed this week.
The city has also refrained from hiring its own pest control company to do the treatment — the cost of which could be tacked on to the landlord’s property tax bill.
“The landlord has been in compliance,” the city said on Monday.
Stam’s landlord previously denied to CBC Hamilton the building had bedbugs in the fall or winter and said if there were, it was because Stam had brought them in intentionally.
St. John said on Monday he is “unaware of the status of bedbugs” although he noted he pays a pest control bill nearly every month.
The property management company Blackbird Property Group did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Appalling’ response by city, says tenant
Stam wants to know how her landlord can be in compliance when the bedbugs are still in her apartment, she said.
On many occasions tenants have been notified of an upcoming inspection or treatment but nobody shows up, Stam said.
Stam said the building also has not undergone a “block” treatment since the ordeal began, which would mean several units are sprayed at the same time as bedbugs easily travel between units and multiply.
A block treatment was recommended by a bylaw officer in September, as stated in emails to Stam.
Instead Stam’s unit has been sprayed on its own — twice in November, and when that didn’t work, twice in March. But Stam found another bed bug on March 28 and alerted the inspector.
In an email viewed by CBC Hamilton, the inspector responded to Stam’s concerns by referencing previous inspections that didn’t reveal bedbugs.
“You were very pleased after the last inspection,” the inspector wrote. “You then sent me an email with a video of a live bed bug running around on your desk and asked the unit below you be inspected for bedbugs because you were convinced it was the source of your very occasional sightings in your apartment.”
Despite what she called an “appalling” response from public health, Stam decided to follow the city’s own recommendations.
“It is very important that you report all pests in your home and common areas of your building — even if it is only one bed bug,” the city says on its website.
She pushed for another inspection, which she said was booked for April 10.
Block treatment scheduled
But when public health followed up with the property manager a week later to find out the results, it became clear no inspection had happened, according to an email from a public health supervisor to Stam.
In a recent email to all tenants, property manager Tina Lister advised “a tenant” is making “false reports” to the city about bedbugs in the building and that’s why an inspection had to be done for all units on April 18.
That inspection, which the public health inspector was on site for, revealed what Stam had been saying since last year — other units were infested, the supervisor confirmed to Stam in an email.
“All the chances the [landlord] has been given has prolonged this to no end,” Stam said. “This should have all happened in September.”
A block treatment is now scheduled for May 3, according to an email sent by the property manager. Stam is skeptical it will happen but is holding out hope the building will soon be rid of bedbugs once and for all.
Because the bedbugs have caused her sleepless nights, lost work hours and mental anguish and stress, Stam said she has recently been staying at a friend’s place. She said what she wants most is to return home soon and to not have to send the city anymore emails.