Bedbugs persist 8 months on at Hamilton apartment. Public health says landlord is in compliance

Eight months after first spotting the tiny pests crawling across her desk, Esther Stam's apartment still has bedbugs. 

That's despite the downtown Hamilton tenant asking the property manager repeatedly to follow the advice of a public health inspector to treat multiple units in the building at once. 

Stam said she has also sent over 100 emails to the city, imploring staff to enforce its own property standards bylaw.

"The last eight months are a blur — wasted and consistently back to square one," Stam said. 

"I'm told that the city has done all they can do. I keep getting treated like I'm the problem." 

The bedbugs persist even as public health director Kevin McDonald told CBC Hamilton in February that it's his division's priority to eradicate pests "as quickly and effectively as possible." 

The city has never issued a written order for landlord Oliver St. John to deal with the bedbugs since August, when Stam made her first call to the city about them. It has rather opted for less-severe verbal warnings, McDonald confirmed this week.

The city has also refrained from hiring its own pest control company to do the treatment — the cost of which could be tacked on to the landlord's property tax bill. 

"The landlord has been in compliance," the city said on Monday.

Stam's landlord previously denied to CBC Hamilton the building had bedbugs in the fall or winter and said if there were, it was because Stam had brought them in intentionally.

St. John said on Monday he is "unaware of the status of bedbugs" although he noted he pays a pest control bill nearly every month. 

The property management company Blackbird Property Group did not respond to a request for comment.

Stam wants to know how her landlord can be in compliance when the bedbugs are still in her apartment, she said.

On many occasions tenants have been notified of an upcoming inspection or treatment but nobody shows up, Stam said.