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Bedbugs making life a nightmare for disabled woman at North Bergen senior building
By Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal
An 86-year-old disabled woman living in a North Bergen senior housing building says recurring bedbug infestation has her at wit's end after she's had to throw out numerous items, including clothing and mattresses.And to make matters worse, each time her home at Cullum Towers on Grand Avenue is riddled with bedbugs, her healthcare aides are barred by their company from visiting the frail woman who is hard of hearing and can has a difficult time walking.
“The people here are very nice and I hate what is happening to them,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she fears complaints about the bedbugs will anger management. North Bergen Housing Authority spokesman Phil Swibinski said no tenants' complaints would ever lead to reprisals.
Over the past four years she says she has had to replace her bed twice and her couch three times. The woman’s son said she was once hospitalized due to infections on her legs cause by scratching her bedbug bites.
North Bergen officials say they have been analyzing the way bedbug complaints are handled and a proactive screening program is in the works.
“I have (an aide), but they took her off because of this,” said the woman who has lived in the building for two decades. “If it doesn’t end now, I’m going to have to get out of here.”
The senior citizen said yesterday that on one visit by an exterminator to her home in the 308-unit building she asked “if I was the only one who has them and he said ‘No, there are plenty here.’”
She also said other residents have admitted to her that they have had bedbug infestations and she surmised that some who denied it did so out of embarrassment.
The woman’s apartment is currently undergoing another wave of treatments by a bedbug exterminator. Exterminators visited on Dec. 26, Jan. 9 and will be back on Jan. 23, according to paperwork in the woman's apartment.
Her son, a warehouse worker, said he knows of five or six bedbug outbreaks in his mother’s apartment over the “past few years.”
“There have been many instances where bedbugs showed up in her building, forcing her to throw out clothes, furniture, linens, etc., each time,” the son said. “My mother and other people in the building have no recourse when they throw out their personal belongings. … It’s not safe to leave her alone for an extended time without help.”
Swibinski said that in the past complaints were dealt with on a case by case basis and residents were responsible for a set of preparations before an exterminator could deal with the problem.
In some cases residents did not fully comply with the preparation instructions, which made some previous attempts to remove the infestation less effective. In some cases residents may have been unable to properly prep for exterminators.
The North Bergen Housing Authority will be contracting with an exterminator to screen the entire building for hot spots and will then take all necessary measures to eradicate all pests, including assisting residents with preparation work which goes above and beyond its responsibilities as a landlord.
This new extermination plan is in the final planning stages and will happen within the coming weeks, Swibinski said.
Cullum Towers is federally subsidized and managed by the North Bergen Housing Authority. While bedbugs have been reported in the building in the past, the instances were no greater than would be expected in any comparable urban high-rise.
Any suggestion that tenant complaints could lead to reprisals is completely without merit and has no basis in fact, Swibinski said.