Chorey Park sees low bedbug numbers
Published 10:29 pm Tuesday, March 3, 2020
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Though there have been sporadic recurrences of bedbugs at the Chorey Park Apartments, the company treating them has told the Suffolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority that they are under control.
The housing authority’s executive director, Tracey Snipes, told the board at its meeting last week that Accurid Pest Solutions, the company contracted to perform the bedbug remediation at Chorey Park, has reported low-level bedbug activity in three of the building’s 100 apartments. The housing authority approved a $100,400 contract with the company to perform bedbug remediation last September.
Snipes said a report provided to her from Accurid noted that the three units were treated immediately to contain the spread.
Indications were that the bedbugs had been recently brought into the apartment, Snipes added.
The three units were treated successfully, and follow-up inspections will be conducted next week, Snipes said, noting that the property manager at Chorey Park will continue to check the bedbug traps.
Board chairman Quinton Franklin asked how many times apartments that have been re-infested with bedbugs could be tested before there was any action against the resident. He wanted to know about how apartments are being tracked for bedbug issues. Snipes said there are records of what is going on in each one.
“We have a spreadsheet that tells everything that happens in every unit,” Snipes said. “We are at a point where we will have to create a policy as to how we handle this because each time that Accurid comes out … for treatment, it’s $1,356.”
That’s a price Snipes said the agency could not sustain.
“That’s part of the conversation for when we were talking about giving the $500 to everyone,” Snipes said, referring to a stipend that was given to residents to help them pay for costs of the bedbug issue, “and why we insisted on doing the training portion of that, because the $500 would fix it one time, but if the behavior that caused it to be infested to start with doesn’t change, we’re back to the exact same issue.”
Snipes believes the difference now is that residents will be quicker to report a bedbug issue to the agency.
“It’s still an issue if people are continuing the same behavior that got us there in the first place,” Snipes said.