Lions place buyer hiring full-time exterminator to battle bedbugs

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This article was published 22/12/2023 (664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The new owner of the former Lions Place apartment complex is hiring a full-time exterminator to get a handle on a bedbug infestation that exploded earlier this year.

Earlier this week, Calgary-based Mainstreet Equity Corp., which purchased the non-profit affordable seniors residence last winter, posted an online ad for a permanent pest-control technician.

“It’s about time,” said Gerry Brown, the building tenant who chaired the Lions Place residents’ seniors action committee, which fought the sale to the private company.

“I told them what they are doing is not working. When (the current exterminator) comes to say they will spray your place they say they won’t be back to do it for 10 days. Well, what do you think is happening during those 10 days?”

Longtime residents of the renamed The Residences at Portage Commons feared Mainstreet Equity would raise rents beyond their ability to pay. The previous provincial government stepped in with a two-year $1.2-million rent-stabilization fund to cover any increases. Since then, many have found alternative places to live.

Brown said Friday the situation is so bad that when seniors move out of the complex, they have to first provide their new landlord with a document saying any furniture, clothing, bedding or other items they are bringing with them has been heat-treated to kill the bugs.

As well, Brown said he has heard that some some trucking companies are refusing to move people in or out, and service and tradespeople have declined requests to work in the building at 610 Portage Ave.

“I told (Mainstreet) you won’t get this under control until you get a team dedicated to the building,” he said. “The manager said that would cost too much, but I said you already have about four men here for at least six hours each day. Before long you’ll have paid the salary for two people.”

A spokesman for Mainstreet could not be reached for comment Friday.

Last week the Free Press reported that since the purchase of the 291-unit complex, the owner’s profits on its Winnipeg assets have soared by more than 260 per cent.

The profits, helped in part by the government-provided rent subsidies, is allowing the company to begin paying a dividend to shareholders for the first time. It says it will pay 11 cents per share beginning next year.

Seniors from the former non-profit pay about $650 monthly for a single suite; new tenants are paying up to $899.

Brown said he recently went into one suite to help a 92-year-old woman who found bedbugs on her pillowcase and, after he found the insects on top of the box spring, he filled one-third of a cereal bowl with them after spraying insecticide.

He said the building had bedbugs when it was owned by the Lions Housing Corp., but there were only a handful of suites still experiencing a problem last February when it was sold for a reported $24 million.

Bob Robinson, 93, who lived in Lions Place for four years, was forced to move to another 55-plus building a few blocks away because of the infestation.

“I didn’t have to show my new landlord a certificate because the guy who moved me was in the business of heat treatment,” Robinson said. “He assured the management my stuff had been heated.”

Robinson said he had to throw out his bed and two recliners and buy new ones.

“It cost me $4,000 to move,” he said. “The new furniture and heat treatment all cost money.”

But Robinson said he had to move because his adult children refused to visit him in the infested building.

“I took bugs to my son’s place and he had to get rid of some of his furniture,” he said. “It was just because I came over for Sunday dinner.

“My children don’t want me to ever go into that building again and I can’t blame them. I was able to see my friends, but we had to go to a restaurant… my suite had been sprayed at least a half-dozen times and each time I had to vacate for a whole day. It was getting to be an intolerable situation.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca