Residents at a senior housing center say their building has become infested with bedbugs.
Errol Kelly told Channel 2 Action News he woke up to bedbugs all over him.
“I could feel them crawling on me and I jumped up in the middle of the night and tried to see what it is,” Kelly said.
Kelly lives in the Baptist Towers apartments on Myrtle Drive in Atlanta, which National Church Residences manages.
Pest control service workers visited the building last week and identified the insects running rampant as bedbugs, Kelly told the news station.
“When he came in and pulled up the corner of the sheet you could see the bedbugs crawling along the corner of the mattress,” Kelly said.
Another treatment will be needed to treat the infestation, but that won’t happen until at least a week.
A spokesperson for National Church Residences told Channel 2 that 30 units have bedbugs and they’re working to clean them out now.
A former Baptist Towers employee, Sainabou Njai, said some tenants won’t speak up at all because they are just too timid or too sick.
“They’ll just lay there and deal with that until they die, and it’s really sad,” Njai said.
Njai said bedbugs were a problem when she worked there two years ago and nothing has changed.
“It was something that could have been solved with a $7,000 treatment, but they just never did anything about it,” Njai said.
She said whole floors are infested in the building. A National Church Residences spokesperson insists they do a check every quarter and clear out problem areas.
They told Channel 2 they have a strong program to fight bedbugs.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Kelly said.
About the Author
