They're Back!

By Daniel Schneider, PhD

Photo by Moose-Man/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

In October 2014, Alfred Knox of Burlington, Iowa, was made homeless. Knox had complained to his landlord of a bedbug infestation in his new apartment, and after more than six months of inaction by the landlord, he withheld his rent. The landlord initiated eviction proceedings. Knox appeared in court with a jar of bedbugs taken from his apartment to prove the infestation. Fearing the insects, the judge cleared the court and declared judgment for the landlord. The court filed a writ of removal and possession, and on October 3, the sheriff's office removed his belongings and put them on the street.

While the scene is certainly dramatic, the experience is not atypical. There has been a pronounced resurgence of bedbug infestations in the U.S. since the early 2000s. Bedbugs pose significant concerns to public health, housing affordability and security, and the economy, but my study of 8,000 municipalities' responses to the problem reveals that few places are acting. Cities have been hampered by the ambiguity of current public health and housing regulations toward bedbugs, as well as pressure from apartment owners' organizations to block municipal action that assigns responsibility for control to landlords.

The scope of the problem

Bedbugs are blood-feeding parasites that feed almost exclusively on humans and hide in crevices, cracks, and seams in walls, floors, beds, and other furniture and belongings. They disperse passively when attached to clothing, suitcases, or secondhand furniture and bedding, but bedbugs can also travel actively, crawling from one room or apartment to another.

Although there is no evidence that bedbugs transmit diseases in the "wild," they are considered to be "a pest of significant public health importance" by the Centers for Disease Control. While they don't spread infection like some pests, infestations can cause other conditions, including minor dermatological concerns due to bites, allergic responses, sleeplessness, stress, shame, and more severe mental health conditions.

The nuisance, stigma, and health effects of bedbugs have huge social and economic costs, too. Bedbug infestations lead to lost revenues and higher costs for hotels, hospitals, and other service industries. Apartment managers report that controlling infestations affects their profitability. Eliminating bedbugs from homes can cost well over $1,000, beyond the reach of many residents.

Taking action

Municipalities have come up against a few challenges in taking action. A key barrier is the language used in regulations. Even in states that have adopted standard landlord-tenant codes, known as the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, the status of bedbugs has remained ambiguous. Very few codes specifically include bedbugs in their wording. Thousands of codes include "insects," "pests," and "vermin," but if those terms are not defined, it remains unclear as to whether bedbugs are included. Another challenge comes in the form of powerful national and local apartment owners associations actively thwarting municipalities' attempts to force landlords to bear the burden for eradicating bedbug infestations.

Drawing by A.J.E. Terzi/Wikipedia (CC BY 4.0).

Of the 8,000 places studied, only 123 cities or counties, or approximately 1.5 percent of the sample jurisdictions, have provisions in their code that specifically address bedbugs. Of these, only 95 address bedbugs in residential housing — as opposed to hotels, motels, hospitals, and the like.

Cities' responses to the bedbug problem vary, but there are four general approaches: doing little or nothing, interpreting existing codes to include bedbugs, adding bedbugs to existing definitions of pests or vermin, or drafting comprehensive ordinances to specifically address bedbug infestations.

For instance, Boston interpreted its existing code referring to "insects" to include bedbugs and empowered its housing department to conduct inspections. On the other hand, both Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Cincinnati had provisions in their code addressing vermin in housing, but neither city considered the law to apply to bedbugs. To address the burgeoning infestations, Cincinnati changed their code to specifically include bedbugs, allowing them to implement a citywide eradication program. In contrast, Virginia Beach has taken no action and "cannot address infestations under the current state and local ordinances."

Several cities have developed comprehensive policies for addressing the bedbug epidemic that deal with multiple aspects of control, including landlord and tenant responsibilities, notification, inspection, liability, disposal of infested material, and bedbugs in hotels and other locations. The most comprehensive bedbug ordinance in the country, Chicago's states that "bedbugs are hereby declared to be a public nuisance" and subject to abatement. It empowers the Commissioner of Health and Commissioner of Buildings to promulgate rules and regulations and gives enforcement power to the Commissioner of Health. It makes clear the landlord's responsibility for eradication and protects tenants from retaliation.

Because the central locus of action for addressing bedbugs has been the landlord-tenant relationship, the political economy of housing has been central to cities' responses. Groups representing landlord interests have been concerned about bedbug regulation and liability for extermination costs and have fought many bedbug ordinances and efforts at the local, state, and federal levels. The National Apartment Association is at the center of the opposition to bedbug legislation and, among other activities, has promulgated a standard lease addendum that makes it possible for the apartment owner to shift liability for an infestation to the resident.

As Dawn Biehler notes in her history of urban pests, bedbugs are "creatures of community." Because human shelter is its habitat and people its food, all of the processes that structure patterns of housing will also affect bedbugs. Bedbug infestations are thus intimately tied to issues of housing affordability, insecurity and quality, eviction, and mobility. As patterns of housing influence environmental equity and disparate health impacts such as blood lead concentrations or asthma, they will also affect bedbug risk. Further, pest control is also a function of community.

The resurgence of bedbugs has similar dynamics to an epidemic of an infectious disease, suggesting that the insights from public health campaigns can be applied to bedbugs. The CDC emphasizes three critical components of preventing infectious disease: surveillance, high impact interventions, and sound health policies.

Municipal ordinances that protect tenants and place appropriate responsibilities on landlords are necessary for bedbug control, but efforts must be citywide, addressing infestations in owner-occupied, single-family housing as well. Although comprehensive ordinances coupled with education and adequate funding for inspection and control have the best chance of limiting bedbug infestations, cities should, as a useful start, declare bedbugs a nuisance and threat to public health.

Daniel Schneider is a professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "They're Back: Municipal Responses to the Resurgence of Bed Bug Infestations," (Vol. 85, No. 2) was originally published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 2019.