7
Street roots
May 10, 2013
Bed bugs, like these above, live inside mattresses an d bed frames. They feed on blood and their
bites can create p a in fu l allergic reactions in hum an hosts.
Debugging the bed
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Central City Concern staffers design a new
bed bug-resistant bed with nationwide appeal
BY JAKE THOMAS
S T A FF W R IT E R
ichard 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.
“Iheard 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
R
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,
which he helped design, 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.”
According to CCC spokesperson Kathy
Pape, the beds are encased in a blue
medical-grade nylon that is sealed internally,
making it more difficult for the bugs to
enter. The mattress also has no piping; quilt
stitching or zippers, which bed bugs get past
and hide inside, she said. The bed frames
can also 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, he said. So far, none of the beds
have been disposed of, he said.
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
P H O T O B Y JA K E T H O M A S
From left, Central City Concern’s M arcus Young, social enterprises project manager, Sarah
Porter, office manager, and Herb Draper, facility maintenance manager, stand with C C C ’s
in-house bed bugresistent bed. The beds are being sold to agencies across the country as a way
to control the nation’s bed-bug infestations.
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
thebeds, 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.
Dignity