Bed bugs are one of the worst creatures that you can have infest your home. Not only do they sneak around at night feeding on your blood, they are so difficult to get rid of that it requires paying large sums of money to get them exterminated from your home by a professional.
In the past decade especially, bed bug reports in Canada have been on the rise. This is due to several factors, increased world travel being the largest cause. If you live in an apartment, or any other type of property in close proximity to your neighbors, your chance of seeing a bed bug infestation increases drastically.
In case you have to one day deal with the horrors of a bed bug infestation, get to know your rights and responsibilities as a tenant so that you can have the problem resolved ASAP, avoiding any psychological harm that may result from a bed bug infestation.
Your Rights As A Tenant
If you are a homeowner, unfortunately you will have to find a bed bug exterminator on your own and pay for all the expenses. For tenants, however, you are in luck! Your landlord is the one responsible for ensuring that your unit remains bed bug free, in fact, they are responsible for almost any type of pest infestation unless it is due to factors that are completely your fault.
As soon as you find out that bed bugs have invaded your home you must act quick. Notify your landlord right away and ask them to contact a bed bug exterminator to inspect your home. Make sure that the exterminator they call is in fact experienced with bed bugs to ensure they get rid of them on the first try, otherwise it could lead to a more severe infestation down the road.
Your Responsibilities As A Tenant
As a tenant you will also have some responsibilities in battling your bed bug infestation. The bed bug extermination process requires tenants of infested homes to do certain preliminary procedures to ensure that the extermination is successful. Failure to comply can lead to an unsuccessful extermination which may not be covered by your landlord in the future due to your lack of compliance.
Some of the things you may be asked to do in order to help with the extermination include:
- washing and drying all linens and clothing in a high heat cycle
- moving furniture from infested rooms away from the walls
- giving small electronic devices to the exterminator for inspection
In some cases you may even be required to do some of these tasks if you have a neighbor with a bed bug infestation. Since they are so good at sneaking from one apartment to another, an exterminator may deem it necessary to treat apartments adjacent to the one infested, so if yours is a neighboring apartment you may have to put up with the extermination efforts for a few days as well.