By Jake Thomas, Staff Writer
Richard Klosterman had heard about them. The lady across the
hallway from his apartment had them. And then he had them.
Several years ago, Klosterman remembers waking in the middle
of the night and feeling something crawling on his head. Whatever it was would
fall into his hands and sometimes burst, leaving blood on his hands – his own
blood.
“I heard stories about bed bugs, but I had never seen one,”
said Klosterman, 65, recalling his experience with the parasitic insect that
lives on the blood of humans and have made a comeback in recent years.
He got all the information he could on bed bugs and used
powders and sprays to combat them, but they always came back. He kept finding
them in his bed frame along with their droppings, which damaged his furniture.
It got to the point where his dog became frightened of the bugs, he recalls.
Klosterman finally broke down and alerted the staff at his
building. Exterminating bed bugs is an arduous process, lasting about four
weeks. When they were done, they gave Klosterman a new bed —— one that’s
uniquely designed to keep the pests from ever coming back.
Bed bugs have made a dramatic resurgence in recent years,
infesting hotels, hostels and apartment buildings from coast to coast. As a
result, Central City Concern —— Portland’s largest social-service provider that
operates 1,600 residential units in 20 different properties, including
Klosterman’s building — has developed a bed bug-resistant bed that’s meant to
be as inhospitable as possible to the dreaded insects, giving providers of
low-income and transitional housing a new tool to combat them.
Branded the “Central City Bed,” the patent-pending beds
don’t look too different from their more conventional counterparts, but they
have subtle features aimed at deterring the pests, while making their detection
and extermination swifter and easier.
“If they can harbor in the bed close to the host in between
meals, then that’s ideal for them,” said Herb Draper, a CCC facility
maintenance manager, in the basement of one of the nonprofit’s administrative
offices where models of the beds are displayed in what resembles an Ikea
showroom.
Draper explained that the bed frames are made from steel angle iron with a stretch-steel surface. They also
have a powder coating, which forms a slick casing. These attributes, he said, make
it more difficult for the bugs to climb up the beds in search of a meal. The
beds also have flared-out legs to keep them away from walls, where the bugs
might hide or crawl up.
More conventional wooden frames, with their cracks and
crevices, provide the flat-bodied bed bugs with more places to crawl in and
wait for their host to go to sleep, said Draper.
“Bed bugs like rough surfaces; they like porous surfaces,”
said Draper. “A box-spring is a perfect example.”
Accrording to CCC spokesperson Kathy Pape, the mattess, manufactured by Parklane Mattresses, are encased in a blue medical-grade nylone that is sealed internally, making it more difficult for the bugs to enter. The mattress also has no piping, quilt or zippers, which bed bugs get past and hide inside, she said. The bed frames can also be be stacked 10 high, according to Pape.
After an infestation occurs, more conventional beds need to
be sent to the landfill because there’s no way to be certain that bed bugs
aren’t hiding deep inside them, said Draper. The bed bug-resistant beds, he
said, are different, allowing for easier inspection of residential units when
there is an infestation or when a resident moves out. “So far, none of
the beds have been disposed of.” The frames can also be easily be cleaned and put back to use.
Several years ago, public health agencies began to see an
increase in reports of bed bugs. The parasites had been largely eradicated in
the mid-20th century, but had made a comeback, likely because they had
developed a resistance to pesticides, international travel had increased, the
awareness of them had decreased, and local pest-control programs had declined.
“Everyone agrees that bed bugs aren’t going to go away,”
said Matt Davis, senior program specialist at the Multnomah County Health
Department.
Davis said that it was about 2005 when bed bugs became a
problem for social-service providers and government agencies. Two years ago, he
said, the county along with other government entities, nonprofit organizations
and housing providers formed a work group to share ideas on how to deal with
the pests.
In 2010, CCC began producing its bed bug-resistant beds and
began using them first in Madrona Studios.
Draper said around the time bed bugs began to become more
present, the purchasing and maintenance staffs at CCC recognized the need to
have a bed that was better designed to deal with the pests. Realizing that
there were no beds designed to deal with bed bugs on the market, CCC began
developing the beds with input from its various departments, said Draper.
“I love it because when you learn about it, you realize how
simple it is,” said Davis of the beds, describing them as a low-cost way of
dealing with the problem that doesn’t use toxic chemicals.
So far, CCC has installed the beds in about 650 of its
units.
And news of the beds has spread nationwide as providers grapple
with keeping bed bugs out of their buildings. CCC has sold nearly 1,300 bed
frames and over 200 mattresses to like-minded organizations along the West
Coast, as well as in Connecticut, Delaware and Philadelphia. A full-size frame
runs $460, and a twin is $380.
“The less hospitable the environment (for bed bugs), the
less you’ll have a problem, and the beds contribute,” says Rachel Duke,
supportive housing program director at Bud Clark Commons, which uses the beds
in most of its 130 residencies. She says that the beds work with its overall
strategy of preventing bed bugs through education, as well as other tactics,
such as a heat treatment room, where tenants’ belongings are exposed to such
high temperatures that any bugs hiding in them die off.
Shannon Singleton, program manager at the Royal Palm housing
facility, said that the beds helped make eradication of the bed bugs much
easier because they left them with no where to hide.
But the beds make the biggest difference for residents who
are no longer riddled with anxiety from the pests.
“It’s a real relief to sleep and not have these things
crawling on you,” said Klosterman.
Profits from the Central City Bed TM frames and mattresses go back into Central City programs. This social enterprise will help us continue such programs as the Community Volunteer Corps, mentored service projects in the community with 10-plus other non-profit organizations.
This article appears in 2013-05-10.