After years of reports saying that SF’s bedbug problem is getting worse and worse, the Department of Health is planning its first revision of the city’s bedbug management plan since 2008.
In 2010, the DPH said bedbug reports had risen by 44%, and in April, 2011, Supervisor Jane Kim tore into the DPH at a Board meeting for a perceived lack of bedbug management.
Nearly a year after Kim’s critiques of the Department, the DPH will be holding a meeting on proposals that squash bedbugs or at least cut down on them, in what appears to be their first bedbug policy revision in 4 years.
Karen Cohn, a manager in the department’s environmental health division, tells the Chron that “there will always be some bedbugs. Our overall goal is to teach everybody what we can do to avoid them and to quickly manage then should they appear.”
Proposed changes (you can see all of them here) include requiring landlords to keep a “San Francisco Bed Bug Complaint Response Log,” that building owners must provide “tenants with plastic bags to be utilized for doublebagging of personal items designated for disposal” (free bags!), and that a licensed Pest Control Operator “may use dogs trained to identify the presence of bed bugs.”
The meeting is set for this Thursday from 1:30-3 PM at 101 Grove St. in room 300, reports the Chron. The public is encouraged to attend.
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