Landlord: Tenant To Blame For Bedbug Problem

For the second straight night Nicole Priaulx slipped into a tent next to a pile of rat-infested garbage and tried to sleep away her troubles.  When she awoke, however, they had somehow managed to multiply, and she was still scratching at the scattered bed bug bites that spotted her legs.

“You just feel like garbage,” she said, looking groggy after a restless evening in a sleeping bag.  “You get up in the morning and you’re itchy.”

Priaulx was forced to leave her apartment at Kipling and Lakeshore because of an infestation of bed bugs, and she pointed the finger of blame directly at her landlord.  A day later, her landlord, Zack Charaf, was pointing the finger right back at her, claiming she brought the nocturnal insects to the complex when she moved in two weeks ago. 

Charaf also claims he offered her a place in another unit until the problem was rectified, but she declined, choosing instead to pitch a tent with another tenant at the back of the complex. 

Charaf also claims an exterminator’s report backs his side of the argument. 

“He made a report and everything and (the bed bugs were in) her couch, she brought them in,” he said.

It’s an allegation Priaulx flatly denies.

“I didn’t have them in my previous apartment,” she maintains. 

Charaf plans to have the entire building sprayed next month.  In the meantime, Priaulx will spend one more night under the smog-blanketed stars.  It’s better, she claims, that letting the bed bugs bite.

What are bed bugs and how to get rid of them.

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