Bed Bug Blog

The Collier County Health Department is inspecting St. Matthew’s House today after receiving a complaint about bed bugs, but the health department’s jurisdiction does not include the living facilities of the homeless shelter in East Naples.

The shelter’s kitchen is due for a six-month inspection and that will be the health department’s focus, said Deb Millsap, spokeswoman for the department.

Vann Ellison, executive director of St. Matthew’s, said the shelter has had the bed bug problem for 1(1/2) years and has been aggressively combating the problem. Ellison said no state agency has jurisdiction over homeless shelter dormitories.

“That’s one of the reasons why I had to get educated, there is no clearinghouse for information,” he said. “We have spent in the last year $48,000 trying to eradicate the bed bugs in our facility. It’s an ongoing thing and frustrating.”

The shelter organization houses 170 people in its East Naples and Immokalee locations and there is a turnover of 100 people a month, he said.

Bed bugs can be brought in by clothing or pillows and live in cracks of bed frames and in bedding. The shelter has had the East Naples building tented for bed bugs and termites in November, 2008, and since then bed linens are treated regularly with a high-heat dryer, mattresses have been covered in vinyl and a company comes in and sprays weekly.

“It’s a very sporadic problem,” he said. “It is frustrating because we have spent so much money trying to fix it.”


Author: Liz Freeman