“Paranoia on another level”: Burnaby resident details agony of months-long bedbug infestation

Every morning at 5am, Katya B wakes up in her studio apartment to turn over her mattress.

After turning on every single light in her home, she scours every crack and crevice for dark spots—a telltale sign that bedbugs have been in the area.

Katya, who’s lived in the apartment in the low-rise building at 7466 14th Ave (Waldorf Manor) for almost exactly two years, has been dealing with a persistent bedbug problem since late March of 2021.

“The only way to figure it out, it’s like one day you start to itch,” Katya told the Beacon.

“I didn’t think to turn over my bed, my mattress, for a couple of days. And when it comes to bed bugs, every single minute is crucial.”

Most of Katya’s furniture, including her bed, was made of wood—the perfect environment for bedbugs.

The building facilitated several rounds of treatment, but within weeks the problem would return. Katya said the building manager told her that the problem was possibly coming from a tenant a couple of floors below her unit, who was refusing to allow any treatment.

Katya ended up having to get rid of all her furniture—and the person who did one of the treatments in her unit told her that bringing in new furniture before the problem was solved would make things worse.

The building manager offered her a discount of $20 on her May rent of $1,100 for the “inconvenience”—that never ended up being applied (the Beacon has seen screenshots of exchanges between Katya and the building manager that confirm this).

Now, she said the building manager has told her to just vacuum if she sees more bugs. She was also told she should wrap her mattress in plastic to try and keep the bugs out.

“There was no official response from administration. [They] never apologize and never suggest anything,” Katya said.

“I’d like them to provide me with … a hazard-free place. They never responded, never ever.”

Katya told the Beacon her mental health has seriously suffered as a result of the never-ending infestation. Her empty apartment aside, she’s been dealing with bites and itchiness on her legs, arms, and face. She’s developed a persistent fear that the bedbugs will crawl into her ears and cause serious health issues. Her sleep has suffered severely, and she’s concerned that she has brought bugs on her to her workplace and posed a hazard to her coworkers.

“I’m going crazy. I’ve gone completely insane. It’s a level of devastation when you feel so desperate, so vulnerable, because there is no help provided … I have an insect phobia now. I see anything black in my peripheral vision and it freaks me out… the quality of my life is just below anything,” she said in an emotional interview.

“I don’t have nice mornings anymore. Every morning, that’s my routine—5am I have to turn [over] everything and go through every single crack and search [for bedbugs] in everything. It’s paranoia on another level. I consider myself as a stable person—I’m not stable anymore.”

Just a few of the dozens of photos Katya sent to the Beacon detailing the bedbugs in her apartment, and her living arrangements. Katya B / Submitted

Compensation

On top of the bedbugs, there’s now another problem in the building.

“We have mice [making] terrible, terrible noises and getting through to the units.”

Katya said she would have left long ago if she could. But for financial reasons, it’s been difficult to leave Waldorf Manor.

Her lease will finally come to an end at the end of this month, and Katya said she’s over the moon to be getting out and going to a new apartment—but she’s leaving with no furniture.

“I have an absolutely empty unit with one couch bed that I bought in IKEA that I cannot take it too. It’s like 150 bucks but still, you know, just that feeling of fear—why do I have to throw away [my furniture]?”

She’s asked Waldorf management to compensate her either for the last month of rent or for at least some of her ruined furniture—amounting to $228.

“I’m happy that I now can make it [out] but I want to have fairness here. You know, it’s not that I’m a greedy person looking for money. I just want to put things in the proper place.”

The Beacon spoke to Liu—who said that’s not going to happen.

Liu confirmed with the Beacon that several other tenants have reported bedbug issues over the past few months, but wouldn’t clarify how many or for how long. He also wouldn’t confirm that he had told Katya the problem was coming from one unit whose tenants had refused treatments.

He did agree that he had told Katya that she needed to simply vacuum up any bugs after the last treatment, claiming that the building had done a “bio treatment” which required a 3-month period before any subsequent treatments.

But after a certain point, Liu said “we can’t do anything about the bedbugs.”

In an email to management, Katya emphasized that she didn’t believe building caretaker Jun Liu was at fault at all—saying she understands he’s not a decision-maker and that he tries to be a good employee.

Extermination options

According to Burnaby-based extermination company, The X-Terminators, the treatment the caretaker may be referring to is relatively new and usually has 30-day windows between treatments.

The company’s office manager, Ashley Cochrane, said that treatment involves a spray that would give the bedbugs a fungal infection when they cross over it. In that treatment, the company tells clients to call them again if there are still bugs after 30 days.

She said it’s not particularly uncommon to see persistent infestations that can last several rounds of treatment, with surviving bedbugs sometimes developing a resistance to some treatments.

But she said if it’s true that the problem is stemming from one unit whose tenants won’t allow the building to conduct any treatments, the problem will be there for a long time to come.

“If there’s a neighbour that has them and is not doing anything, you can spray and you can spray, and you can spray—but if they’re coming from a neighbour, they’re always going to keep coming from that neighbour. So it can be really frustrating,” Cochrane said.

Cochrane, meanwhile, said low-rise and especially wooden apartment buildings provide a perfect avenue for bedbugs to spread between units. She said when the population becomes too large in one unit, they spread out to others—travelling easily through shared laundry, for example.

Her advice to people—tenants or landlords—who find themselves in a similar situation as Katya is to document everything possible. Take photos and videos of the bugs and evidence they’ve been there, and ask the pest control company what kind of treatment they use so you can keep track. Avoid using a bug bomb, as they can actually spread the problem further.

And most importantly, don’t put off seeking treatment.

“Bed bugs are one of those issues where you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out where it’s come from, but at the end of the day, it’s really in the landlord’s best interest to treat it,” Cochrane said.

“Because otherwise this kind of thing can happen and it spreads and it multiplies in price to deal with it, the longer you leave it. So ideally, quick treatment—if you find one, you probably need treatment right away.”

Legal opinion

Zuzana Modrovic, who’s a lawyer at the housing law clinic at the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre (TRAC), told the Beacon that landlords do have an obligation to adequately deal with pest control.

“Infestations happen in buildings, and sometimes they take months to get rid of, but they can be dealt with if a landlord acts properly to get rid of them. It may take months, that is something that does sometimes happen. But they can’t sort of throw up their hands and say, ‘well, it’s too bad, we tried.’ That’s not enough,” they said.

Modrovic also said that if the landlord fails in their duty to deal with pests and the tenant can prove they suffered damages as a result, they may be able to take the case to the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) for financial compensation.

“But the landlord actually has to fail in that duty. So they have to either not treat pests when they need to be treated or somehow do it inadequately,” Modrovic said.

“And simply taking a long time to get rid of bedbugs may not be enough to prove that the landlord has not acted in a sufficient way to deal with the bedbugs.”

Modrovic further cautioned that just taking rumours about an uncooperative tenant to the RTB likely wouldn’t be enough—an individual would need to gather evidence as well, like a statement from the pest control company or witness testimony.

In cases like that, landlords could have cause to evict the tenant, although Modrovic said that should be a last resort only.

Katya plans on filing a complaint with the RTB this week. In the meantime, she wants to warn people who may be looking to rent at Waldorf Manor that they should find another place to live.