SOUTH PORTLAND – The South Portland Housing Authority, like many agencies of its kind, has a bedbug problem.

They have used dogs to detect the persistent pests, said Executive Director Michael Hulsey, and they have tried heat and chemicals to eradicate them. But bedbugs, he said, are hard to control.

“We are living a nightmare,” said Hulsey. The South Portland Housing Authority, he said, operates more than 640 units for elderly and families across the city. “It is a constant struggle for us. What we are finding is we are more managing the bed bug situation than eliminating it. In some cases we have had success stories and in some cases we have not.”

South Portland is far from the only place dealing with bedbugs. The small insects that feed on human blood are in communities all over the United States – and Maine.

“At this point I don’t know of any place that they’re not,” said Jeff Haines of Atlantic Pest Control, which has offices in Arundel, Biddeford and Brunswick. “Anywhere in the state you go you’re going to find bedbugs.”

Haines said bedbugs are in places that include remote Presque Isle and Portland, Maine’s largest city. In fact, Portland is one of the top five cities in the nation most infected with bedbugs, Haines told a state panel last year.

“Bedbugs are more of a problem now than I can ever remember,” said Saco Code Enforcement Officer Dick Lambert said. “They definitely seem to have become more prevalent.”

Haines said bedbugs are on the rise due to a variety of factors, including increased international travel and the hardy insects’ increasing resistance to chemicals used to eradicate them.

In fact, bedbugs have become so common in Maine that now a new state law regarding landlord-tenant issues includes a section that spells out landlord and tenant responsibility for getting rid of the annoying pests in rental properties. The law, which the Legislature approved in March, took effect July 12.

Sherrin Vail is the Greater Portland regional property manager for Avesta Housing, one of Maine’s largest providers of affordable housing, and was a member of the panel that helped draft the new bedbug law.

She said the new state law is necessary to protect both landlords and tenants.

“Unfortunately bedbugs are a reality for every landlord these days,” Vail said.

Bedbugs have become such a problem, she said, that Avesta has taken steps to educate tenants about bedbugs; what they look like, how they bite and the need to deal with the problem as soon as it arises. Vail said Avesta has even created posters regarding bedbugs that have been translated into a variety of foreign languages in order to reach tenants who don’t speak or read English well.

Haines, a sales manager with Atlantic Pest Control who testified about bedbugs to a state study group that came up with the recommendations that were incorporated into the new law, said the legislation addresses the problem of landlords taking months to react to a bedbug complaint. It requires them to bring in an exterminator within 10 days or face a fine or have to pay damages.

And Haines said the law also gives landlords some recourse if tenants don’t comply with the things they need to do to get rid of the bedbugs -– such as disinfecting their homes and eliminating the insects’ hiding places. Under the law, tenants who don’t follow “reasonable measures” to control the infestation can end up having to pay for all the pest control costs.

Vail and Lambert also stressed that tenants and landlords should realize an infestation is not something they can handle without professional assistance. Bedbugs can only be eradicated, both said, by professional pest control methods.

“Pest control (personnel), landlord, the tenant, we all have steps we need to do. If any one is short-circuited, the whole thing can fall apart and we’ll fail,” Haines added.

According to a bedbug fact sheet on the website of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, adult bedbugs are about the size of an apple seed with flat, oval bodies colored rusty red. After feeding on blood, their bodies swell and become a brighter red.

Bedbugs are active at night when people are asleep.

While bedbugs prefer human blood, they’ll also feed on other animals such as cats and dogs, according to an article by Michael Potter, a University of Kentucky professor and urban entomologist who Haines said is a leading expert on bedbugs.

Bedbugs don’t carry disease, according to the Maine CDC, but their bites are annoying and can cause itchy welts on some people.

Potter said bedbugs were common in the United States before World War II but virtually disappeared during the 1940s and 1950s because of the use of the pesticide DDT. But, he said, they’ve made a comeback in recent years.

Bedbugs like to live close to where they eat, so they are commonly found on the bed, hiding in the seams and crevices of the mattress and box spring and even bed frames and headboards, Potter said.

Bedbugs also can hide in other crevices in furniture and floors and walls, the Maine CDC fact sheet said. And they can live for months without food and water.

The parasites also have another characteristic.

“They’re very good hitchhikers,” Haines said.

They can travel on everything from luggage to furniture to bedding to clothing.

And they are found everywhere in places ranging from private homes to schools and health care facilities. Haines said they’re even in the nicest of neighborhoods.

“There are no economic boundaries with this pest,” he said. “It’s not a sanitary pest at all. It can be in the cleanest of homes. This pest is very indiscriminate about who it goes after.”

Hotels, motels and rental apartments are particularly vulnerable because of frequent turnover of occupants, according to Potter.

Haines said people who live in cities often are more likely to take in used furniture put out on the street, which could be infested with bedbugs.

He said bedbugs are difficult to eradicate. You can put out bait to get rid of some pests, such as ants, he said. But with bedbugs, Haines said, “their bait is blood.” The Maine CDC recommends hiring pest control professionals licensed by the Maine Board of Pesticide Control to get rid of bedbugs.

Haines said that his company uses dogs to sniff out where bedbugs are hiding and then uses heaters set at 135 degrees for four hours to kill them. Although he said bedbugs have thrived this summer with temperatures in the 80s, they can’t stand extreme heat. Heat alone can be effective, but in some case chemicals are needed too, Haines said. However, he said, bedbugs are developing resistance to the chemicals currently being used.

Treating a two-bedroom apartment can cost about $700, but because bedbugs can travel to other apartments, typically the units contiguous to the infected one must be treated also, Haines said. He said that could cost a landlord thousands of dollars.

“Financially it is a big burden for us, but we are doing what we can to get rid of them,” said Hulsey, of the South Portland Housing Authority.

The new state law – sponsored by Rep. Pamela Trinward, D-Waterville, and supported by Rep. John Tuttle, D-Sanford – includes protections for both landlords and tenants, according to Tuttle.

Tuttle, who was chairman of the study group that came up with the recommendations for the new law, outlined its provisions regarding bedbugs in a recent news article he authored.

Under the new legislation, tenants have to do such things as notify the landlord they have bedbugs, let the landlord or a pest control agent in to inspect the premises, and take reasonable steps the landlord or exterminator directs them to do to eliminate and control the infestation.

Landlords have to respond quickly to notification that bedbugs are in a rental unit. Landlords also can’t rent units that they know or suspect have bedbugs and they must provide reasonable help, including financial help, to tenants who aren’t able to undertake control measures on their own.

Tuttle wrote that addressing the bedbug issue is important because “I have heard from many constituents who have either been afflicted with terrible bedbug infestations, or who own rental property that has been contaminated by these terrifying and dangerous parasites.”

– Staff writers Kate Irish Collins and Michael Kelley contributed to this report.

Adult bedbugs are about the size of an apple seed with flat, oval bodies colored rusty red. After feeding on blood, their bodies swell and become a brighter red. Bedbugs are active at night when people are asleep.Courtesy photo