Bed Bug Blog

New York's bedbug infestation is getting worse, with almost 10,000 complaints to the city last year - one-third higher than the year before.

"There are lots and lots of people who are having a devastating experience with bedbugs," said Renee Corea, who helped start the coalition New York vs. Bed Bugs after being bitten. "We are already regarded as the most highly infested city in the Untied States."

New Yorkers called 311 with 9,213 bedbug complaints in the last fiscal year, up 33.7% from the year before, according to records that Corea's group obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

That probably understates the problem, Corea said, because uncounted numbers of New Yorkers call exterminators instead of phoning 311.

Bedbugs are tiny insects that live in mattresses and other furniture but can travel on clothes or luggage. They come out at night, feasting on blood and leaving ugly red welts.

Killing them may require people to disinfect or throw away thousands of dollars worth of furniture and clothes. The bugs often just slink into neighboring apartments, ready to return.

"It's a huge problem," said CityCouncilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), who is sponsoring a City Council hearing next Tuesday on bills to ban the sale of used mattresses, train exterminators to handle bedbugs and force all city agencies to come up with a united strategy.

The city Health Department doesn't consider bedbugs a health issue, but at least three other city agencies track bedbug infestations separately in Housing Authority projects and school buildings.

Not all exterminators know how to spot and treat bedbugs, and critics say the city doesn't do enough to stop infected mattresses from being reused. Some victims may be too embarrassed to seek help, and some small landlords may not be able to afford a competent exterminator, advocates say.

The worst hot spots are in central Brooklyn, where the number of complaints in a cluster of six community boards doubled from 566 to 1,132 in just one year, the data show.

Other spikes appeared in the northern and eastern Bronx, in midtown Mahattan, in the Rockaways and a section of eastern Queens, and on the North Shore of Staten Island.

"If you look at other cities, their local governments have taken a big step to try to educate people and deal with the problem," said Louis Sorkin, a bedbug expert at the American Museum of Natural History.