A suspected cockroach infestation at a Barrie Housing apartment complex could face the music today.
“We are dealing with our pest control company now to go in and I’m going to get them to look at every single building and every single unit and every single room within the building… as soon as possible,” Mary Anne Denny-Lusk, Barrie Housing CEO, told BarrieToday on Wednesday morning about 225 Kozlov St., also known as Northfields.
The three-storey walkup apartments have 53 units.
Pest control measures will be good news for Danielle Callander, who lives in the building with her husband Mark and three-year-old daughter Meadow, and who has sounded the alarm about the bug situation.
“It’s so bad now… it’s completely out of control,” Callander said of the cockroach population there. “I’ve talked to people on my floor. Almost everyone (in eight units) on my floor has them.
“Last night, I went for a walk to put garbage down the chute and I went down the stairs and there were more cockroaches, dead ones that people had stepped on, that weren’t there yesterday,” she added.
Barrie Housing is a non-profit housing provider in the city, and its portfolio has a total of 964 apartments and townhouses at 14 different locations across Barrie.
Approximately 60 per cent of these rental units are for people who qualify for a rent-geared-to-income subsidy. This is applied for through the social housing department at the County of Simcoe. The other 40 per cent of the rental units are available for rent at market value.
Denny-Lusk said she first heard about the possible infestation problem on Tuesday.
“I do know we had one unit that had a pest issue and we were dealing with it,” she said, “and I was not made aware that it has spread further into the building until (Tuesday) morning.
“I’m not even quite sure how far it’s spread to the whole building, and we will have to do our due diligence and find that out.”
Denny-Lusk said how this happened is also being investigated.
“With highrises and multi-residential, we do have pest issues — not normally cockroaches, but we are digging through to figure out how this happened and how we can fix it,” she said.
The Barrie Housing CEO went to the Kozlov Street complex Tuesday and said she did a walk-through with a couple of tenants.
Callander said she hopes this gets solved sooner rather than later.
“I was talking to someone in the hall (Tuesday) night, too, and a baby one (cockroach) was crawling up the wall, “ she said. “I know that there’s bed bugs, from what I’ve heard, in other apartments, but we haven’t got those yet in mine. Knock on wood.”
Callander said every single apartment there was treated for bugs last May, with gel and powder, but things just got worse.
Health Canada says cockroaches have been an insect pest for about four million years and there are more than 3,500 species around the world. They can contaminate food and spread disease by walking over, and excreting on, food or food preparation areas after having travelled through garbage and/or sewers.
Cockroaches will live in any area where food, water and shelter are available. They are attracted to buildings because of the warm, damp conditions offered by kitchens, bathrooms, basements, and plumbing areas. Their presence does not necessarily mean unclean conditions exist.
Roaches and their eggs can hitch a ride into a home on various objects, including used furniture, food items, empty beer and soft drink bottles and shipping cartons. Once inside a building, they travel easily.
Because cockroaches are most active at night, they may go unnoticed for some time. Cockroaches are attracted to food sources that contain starches, sugars and protein, but will eat almost anything when hungry.
Health Canada says intensive cleaning measures and pesticides should be used jointly to control cockroaches. Pesticides alone will not be successful, since the living environment must first be physically changed.
