Bed Bugs Infest Senior Tower

Darlene Taylor is diabetic and 80 percent blind. So she couldn’t see them. But for weeks she felt their biting and the itching.

When her regular nurse’s aide visited her 12th floor apartment last Thursday and lifted up papers on the dining room table, the aide saw them: Bed bugs. Swarms of them.

Now the mattress and box spring are gone. All Taylor’s clothes are wrapped in plastic. Taylor (pictured above) is sleeping on the couch and worried what’s going to happen next.

Many of Taylor’s neighbors in apartments at Edith Johnson Towers on Bristol Street between Dixwell and Ashmun are worried, too.

More than 20 of the apartments have been or are slated to be treated for bed bug infestation.

“The unit was infested in a way we’d never seen before: 100 bed bugs per square foot,” said Rafael Ramos of City Hall’s Livable City Initiative (LCI).

Last week Ramos called BCJ Management, the private company that owns and manages the senior tower.

BCJ treated Taylor’s apartment, removed her bed (except the fame), and readied her clothes.

By end of day Friday LCI issued an order to BCJ, delivered by marshal: Bring in a licensed contractor to treat Taylor’s apartment and another found infested on the second floor. The order also called for inspection of the entire building and treatment where necessary.

BCJ property manager Dana Proctor did not return several calls to the Independent to discuss the extent of the bed bug problem at 114 Bristol. She did speak to Ramos (pictured) by phone Friday afternoon.

According to what Proctor conveyed to Ramos, since December ten to 15 apartments have been treated. Currently six more are slated to. That’s close to one quarter of the tower’s 96 apartments.

Since treatment of one apartment usually involves spraying and treatment of the four apartments surrounding it, in effect the entire building is being treated.

“That’s an infestation,” said Ramos.

BCJ, a private company headquartered in Boston, also manages the nearby Monterey Place development for the housing authority.

And that may explain how the situation has gotten so out of hand.

A perusal of the file of complaints to LCI reveals that before Taylor and her daughter called LCI, only one other bedbug complaint from 114 Bristol was on file in the past six months. That proved to be a false alarm.

All the complaints appropriately had gone to BCJ instead of to LCI — and the problem continued.

Asked for comment about the problem, HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton referred questions to BCJ.

Last week reddish stains were still visible around the legs of the metal frame in Darlene Taylor’s now abandoned bedroom.

“They said put them [all her clothing] in the dryer. It’ll kill ​‘em [the bugs],” Taylor said.

On Friday the clothes remained in several large plastic bags by the apartment door pending a visit by the aide or Taylor’s daughters, all of whom work.

“It was only one year old,” Taylor said of the mattress. She said she troubled that no one offered to replace it. She didn’t cause the bed bug problem, she said as she led a tour of her apartment for a reporter and for Ward 22 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair Cordelia Thorpe, whom she had earlier contacted for help with the problem.

“It’s been going on since December” at the tower, she said.

While individual apartments have been treated, Thorpe said, ​“It’s escalating. They don’t have a clear plan in place to solve it” building- wide, she added.

“If they made a plan … I have to depend on other people to see,” added Taylor.

Last year HANH investigated purchase of a mobile ​“thermal radiation” unit, the technology du jour to deal with the bug du jour. Click here to read that story.

Five people sitting for sun-relief beneath the awnings in front of the building one afternoon last week offered varying opinions — and rumors — - on the problem and on how the management has handled it.

“I know it’s been happening since December,” Sonia Torres said. ​“As soon as I heard about it, I bought a plastic cover for the bed.”

She doesn’t think she’s been affected yet, but she was concerned enough to move from the seventh floor, where ​“I was feeling itchy,” to the 11th, she said .

“But do you know what to do [about the bed bugs], Sonia?” asked Thorpe.

“No,” came the answer.

Thorpe said she had been trying repeatedly to reach BCJ to discuss a building-wide approach to the infestation, with no success.

Susan Lemoine has lived at the towers for five years. A former Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s who has lived in tough conditions, she praised the way the exterminating company had been treating affected apartments.

“The person below me had them, and it was treated. They sprayed and then came back several times, after two weeks, and sprayed again,” she said

She described herself a mad sprayer. To several of the other tenants under the awnings who seemed confused about what to do, she said, ​“They’re attracted to carbon dioxide [emitted by our breathing] near beds.”

“The residents wonder if [ultimately] they’ll have to move out. They’re doing it [the treatment] on a case-by-case basis. [As a result] the bugs are migrating. The instruction needs to come from management, not Ms. Limoine,” said Thorpe.

Before the weekend began Ramos contacted BCJ again and told Proctor that the order requires a licensed contractor to inspect all units of the building.

Procor told him that one had already been ordered, a canine unit arriving to do the work on Aug.1 and 2. Depending on what the sniffers find, treatment will be provided where needed, she said.

Ramos said that when the work concludes, he wants a copy of the report.

Citywide, he said, LCI receives about eight bed bug complaints per month. Sometimes the bugs turn out to be something else.

Ramos said he wishes he had learned earlier about Taylor’s problem. Noting her blindness, he asked aloud, ​“Where were the CNAs [the certified nurse’s aides]?”