Bedbug problem drags on at Santa Rosa’s Bethlehem Towers senior complex

Residents of Bethlehem Towers, a Santa Rosa apartment complex for low-income seniors, are battling a bedbug infestation that they say building managers have badly mishandled.

“They put us off for three weeks until they checked - and it took them another week to remove the furniture,” said Darlene Shor, 69, who said the problem has lasted for a year and her complaints initially went unheeded. In August, her husband was treated with antibiotics for bites that covered his legs up to his hips, she said.

Santa Rosa code enforcement officials, responding to a resident’s complaint, inspected the 14-story building in early August. On Aug. 17, the city put building ownership on notice with a letter describing “infestations increasing from a handful of infested units to an overall 37-plus infested units” on 13 of the building’s floors.

The complex, the largest publicly subsidized senior housing facility in Sonoma County, has 159 apartments and 173 tenants.

The owners were ordered to begin remedying the situation within seven days, a time span reserved for “pretty egregious cases,” said Mark Setterland, Santa Rosa’s chief building inspector.

Representatives of Bethlehem Towers’ owners acknowledge the first signal of a bedbug problem was in August 2014. And they admit to missteps since then that allowed the situation to worsen. But they say they have spent “tens of thousands” of dollars to remedy a problem that can seem intransigent, and for which residents also bear some responsibility.

“I believe we’ve done everything we could do, but I don’t know,” said Doug Abdalla of Reiner Communities, an Irvine-based investment group that owns the Tupper Street property. “It’s really difficult to get rid of them, and there’s no guarantee. It’s not an easy thing.”

Also, he said, managers have met with residents “trying to get them not to do certain things and of course they refuse.” Residents persist, Abdalla said, in bringing home infested free furniture and clothes from the streets or thrift stores that contribute to the problem. “It’s got very little to do with us,” he said.

The city ordered heat treatment of all affected units and common areas on all 14 floors to be done by Aug. 24. Officials also cited managers for storing infested furniture and residents’ belongings in the exercise room and in storage areas without “proper precautionary standards” including wrapping.

Abdalla disputed the formal violations but said that to “mollify the city” measures are nonetheless being taken to comply with the orders. Bedbug-detecting dogs and heat-cleaning treatments were being used before the city stepped in, he said.

“We were already dealing with this and the city came in and gave us a whole extra layer of bureaucracy to deal with,” he said.

He said managers had erred at first by relying on a company that used a less effective chemical treatment, and trying to assess the problem themselves.

“It may be that our people weren’t trained in a certain way,” he said. “Probably” that made the situation worse, he said.

Residents also say the building managers have removed infested furniture improperly, by dragging it uncovered through the building, allowing the pests to fall off and relocate, and by failing to sweep or clean properly afterward.

“They have gone through three different companies, they have failed in three different attempts, that I know of, and they’re sloppy,” said Patricia Edwards, 64.

“They were trying to be cheap about it until the city got mad,” said Shirley Ricard, 73.

Like others in a group of nine women who gathered last week, some on walkers and unsteady legs, at a bus stop near Bethlehem Towers, Ricard was at first reluctant to speak publicly, fearing reprisal by eviction or harassment.

“We get threatened if we talk about it,” she said.

Abdalla, in response, said “It’s been in the building newsletter for months, to call it in and let us know.”

In an email, he added: “We take pride in providing safe and attractive housing to low-income individuals and it dismays me to hear a few of our residents spread untruths and level unjustified accusations at a time when we could use their support and understanding the most.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.