Posts Tagged ‘Bed Bugs’
REPOST: Bed Bugs – From Stories I’d Like to Share
Stories that have shaped my views and have continued to fuel my passion was the primary reason for launching www.laforet.ca this past June. A single father provided me one of those experiences when I ran for Toronto City Council in Scarborough’s Ward 43. While Councillor Paul Ainslie was elected, the race certainly had a lasting impact on me. This man’s story has been impossible to forget, and has served as a reminder to me of the real needs constituents have and the importance of an elected official to address those needs. It is with this, I would like to once again draw attention to a story I want to share. I originally posted it on July 17th 2008.
Bed Bugs
When running for office, you meet a lot of people. Many stories touch you, but often stories have an ability to make you see an issue through the lens of another, and sometimes, change your own views. Often times, it is anecdotes and the stories of others that give one a far better lens to view an issue through. I met a single father and his eight-year-old boy who did just that. Together they showed me their modest apartment, the plaster less living room wall, the drywall falling into their bathtub and the holes in the baseboard that allow cockroaches to migrate into their apartment. The dad informed me of an eight-month-old maintenance request that has gone unanswered, how his son’s school was implementing a uniform policy and he did not know how he was going to pay for it. What really got me was something each of us ought to be ashamed of; bed bugs infesting community-housing buildings in our city.
Every few months, the father was forced to throw out their furniture, go to the furniture bank and arrange for new mattresses for him and his son. As it was, they had no couch, just a single large chair in the living room, a basic coffee table and a small TV resting on pieces of wood. His son told me about waking up in the night, being bitten by bed bugs, and bleeding for the sores because it was hard not to scratch. As he told me his story, he began jumping up and down, and frantically rubbing his arms and body to show me what it is like for him.
I was shocked that in a city like Toronto, we would allow conditions this bad to exist for our most vulnerable citizens. Simply put, it is not right, and particularly a government run entity should not be forcing people to live in conditions like this. Why should a boy go through his childhood fearing his bed and waiting for the next time it needs to be replaced? I thought back to my childhood, and can only recall having two beds while living with my parents and once since. I simply could not imagine such a frequent need for a new one. The amount of worries this single father had to deal with were daunting enough without having to teach his son life lessons like putting the cereal in the fridge to keep cockroaches from crawling into the box, or worrying about the next time the bed bug infestation would get so bad a new mattress could be the only solution. This day changed me. It showed me something that I could not forget, nor wanted to. It gave me something to fight for and something to want to change.
As the days and weeks went on after meeting this family, I shared the story of a father and a boy living in Toronto Community Housing and going through all they had to. I told people if elected I would fight community housing on things like this, and bring light to the backlog of maintenance requests publicly, even in the Council Chamber if I had to. I met a lawyer who told me each year he devotes two weeks of his time to helping low income tenants with landlord issues for free, and that if I were serious about this, he would help and ask some of his colleagues to help too.
I consider the time I spent in that apartment hearing their story and talking and thinking about it in the days and weeks that followed central to changing my thinking around social justice. It really opened my eyes to people not being served by their government and the need for activism within government as well. More than that though it showed me that we as a society cannot turn a blind eye to those who are less fortunate and struggling to get by. While we may feel that this family having affordable housing is a blessing, we need to also think more about the conditions of that housing and the impact it has on both father and son in this case.
No Comments »On Declaring Bed Bugs a Heath Hazard
Councillor Howard Moscoe will ask the Toronto Board of Health to work with the Province to declare bed bugs a health hazard. The reason for the declaration is essentially to empower the City to have the authority to fumigate units that have infestations even if the tenant does not want it sprayed.
Bed bugs should be declared a health hazard and the City should do absolutely everything possible to rid Toronto Community Housing buildings of their infestations and work with the private landlords and property managers throughout Toronto’s rental community to fight infestations there as well. I have been fortunate in my short experience renting never to live in a unit with cockroaches or bed bugs. But that is because I’ve always made a point of asking prospective landlords before renting whether there were bug problems and what they did about it.
The impact bed bugs have on a tenant and their family’s ability to enjoy their home is immense. If you are unable to sleep because of the psychological impacts of bed bugs, that will effect your health and the quality of your life. No one should be afraid of their bed or made to keep their cereal in the fridge because behind that seal is the only way to keep bugs out. A city like ours should not have problems like this.
Tenants in our city, especially in low income buildings are powerless in ridding their units of infestations. You can wash your dishes right after eating, clean you bed sheets weekly, vacuum your furniture and mattresses until you’re blue in the face, if your neighbouring unit has a bug problem, you will too.
The City of Toronto needs to do more to help tenants in TCH rental units especially. On election day the building I was working in was so badly infested on two floors, you could see glue traps and dead cockroaches and other bugs beside the door frame to apartments. It was the first time, I’ve seen bugs in the hall of an infested building. Imagine what that does to your enjoyment of the building if you are literally walking past a bug graveyard on your way into your unit.
There is no excuse for the City not having an all out program to fight bug infestations in our community housing buildings. I am glad that Councillor Moscoe has brought the issue of bed bugs up, and hope he will use his position on the Executive Committee to get additional funding in the 2009 budget for a war on infestations in our public buildings. These residents are constantly forgotten by municipal politicians and it is simply wrong the way their issues are continually ignored.
Clean, well maintained, livable affordable housing units will make for safe, engaged and vibrant neighbourhoods in our city. It is time Council act to show residents of these communities that they understand the problems they face and are going to try to alleviate at least one of them before this term is up. Fighting Bed Bug infestations would be a good place to start.
1 Comment »
Bed Bugs
I was planning on starting with a story about new voters, but a Toronto Sun article I read on the topic of community housing standards, and a recent conversation I’ve had with a friend has brought this one back to top of mind. I had no intention of providing any identifying information about the family I met, but as a result of my previous post on Mornelle Court, I did want to point out that they call it home.
When running for office, you meet a lot of people. Many stories touch you, but often stories have an ability to make you see an issue through the lens of another, and sometimes, change your own views. Often times, it is anecdotes and the stories of others that give one a far better lens to view an issue through. I met a single father and his eight-year-old boy who did just that. Together they showed me their modest apartment, the plaster less living room wall, the drywall falling into their bathtub and the holes in the baseboard that allow cockroaches to migrate into their apartment. The dad informed me of an eight-month-old maintenance request that has gone unanswered, how his son’s school was implementing a uniform policy and he did not know how he was going to pay for it. What really got me was something each of us ought to be ashamed of; bed bugs infesting community-housing buildings in our city.
Every few months, the father was forced to throw out their furniture, go to the furniture bank and arrange for new mattresses for him and his son. As it was, they had no couch, just a single large chair in the living room, a basic coffee table and a small TV resting on pieces of wood. His son told me about waking up in the night, being bitten by bed bugs, and bleeding for the sores because it was hard not to scratch. As he told me his story, he began jumping up and down, and frantically rubbing his arms and body to show me what it is like for him.
I was shocked that in a city like Toronto, we would allow conditions this bad to exist for our most vulnerable citizens. Simply put, it is not right, and particularly a government run entity should not be forcing people to live in conditions like this. Why should a boy go through his childhood fearing his bed and waiting for the next time it needs to be replaced? I thought back to my childhood, and can only recall having two beds while living with my parents and once since. I simply could not imagine such a frequent need for a new one. The amount of worries this single father had to deal with were daunting enough without having to teach his son life lessons like putting the cereal in the fridge to keep cockroaches from crawling into the box, or worrying about the next time the bed bug infestation would get so bad a new mattress could be the only solution. This day changed me. It showed me something that I could not forget, nor wanted to. It gave me something to fight for and something to want to change.
As the days and weeks went on after meeting this family, I shared the story of a father and a boy living in Toronto Community Housing and going through all they had to. I told people if elected I would fight community housing on things like this, and bring light to the backlog of maintenance requests publicly, even in the Council Chamber if I had to. I met a lawyer who told me each year he devotes two weeks of his time to helping low income tenants with landlord issues for free, and that if I were serious about this, he would help and ask some of his colleagues to help too.
I consider the time I spent in that apartment hearing their story and talking and thinking about it in the days and weeks that followed central to changing my thinking around social justice. It really opened my eyes to people not being served by their government and the need for activism within government as well. More than that though it showed me that we as a society cannot turn a blind eye to those who are less fortunate and struggling to get by. While we may feel that this family having affordable housing is a blessing, we need to also think more about the conditions of that housing and the impact it has on both father and son in this case.
