Where Bed Bugs Turn Up Most Across West Palm Beach
Bed bugs are brought into the home by people; in West Palm Beach, that often means a suitcase carried back from up north. Do not assume that bed bugs arrived due to anything unclean; that is extremely rare to be the case. If you worry about a seasonal home, you are not alone; West Palm Beach fills each winter with snowbirds, most of them from the Northeast, and the condos and seasonal rentals along the water fill back up after sitting empty through the summer. The main problem with a seasonal home is that an infestation does not always appear immediately. Bed bugs tend to stick around places near ‘home’, the bed, so a unit that sits closed simply leaves them waiting quietly for months, and any eggs laid before the door was locked will have hatched by the time the owner returns. West Palm Beach is also more open to short-term rentals than some of its neighbours, and a rental that changes guests often has many more chances for someone to arrive carrying bed bugs than a home with one long-term family. One thing to note is that roughly half of West Palm Beach homes are rented, and east of I-95 the downtown and waterfront are dense with condo and apartment towers, where an infestation can travel along a shared wall from one unit to the next. So, let us take a closer look at where bed bugs turn up in West Palm Beach, and who is responsible for treating them when they do.
Bed Bug Law in West Palm Beach: Who Pays for Treatment?
Anyone dealing with bed bugs should consider their options, and the sooner the problem is dealt with the better, because bed bugs will not simply go away on their own. Renters ask us who is supposed to pay, and the honest answer is that Florida already decided most of it. The statute, 83.51 for anyone who wants to look it up, says the landlord of a building with more than one unit has to make reasonable provision for exterminating pests, and bed bugs are actually named in it. So if you are renting an apartment or a leased condo in West Palm Beach, the treatment is usually your landlord’s or the association’s to arrange rather than yours. A rented single-family house is the messier case, and there it comes down to what the lease says. If a landlord will not act, the Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County takes sanitary-nuisance complaints. We are not attorneys, and this is not legal advice, but we deal with these situations regularly and are happy to talk a landlord or a property manager through what a proper treatment involves.