Riverview Lodge – an apartment building for seniors – is scheduled to be emptied of residents for up to two days this week while it is fumigated for an infestation of bedbugs.
In an e-mail exchange with The Hub, Charles Sanders, the manager of policy and communications with the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation (NWTHC), confirmed there is a bedbug infestation at Riverview Lodge.
Sanders said the fumigation is expected to take one or two days.
"Five units have been identified as having bedbugs," he said, adding that the Housing Corporation is "not taking any chances" and is fumigating the entire building.
Sanders said the Local Housing Organization (LHO) in Hay River has arranged for fumigation to take place.
While that happens, the tenants – 15 of the 16 apartments are occupied – will have to temporarily move out.
"Approximately half the residents have arranged for alternate accommodations. The LHO is arranging alternate accommodations for the remaining tenants," Sanders wrote on Aug. 17.
Timothee Caisse, a resident at Riverview Lodge, said on Aug. 17 that his understanding is that the fumigation will begin Thursday, Aug. 23, and the residents will move out that morning.
"We've been told to expect to be away for two nights," he said.
Caisse said the Housing Corporation has begun to wash and bag clothes from Riverview Lodge and put them in a mobile storage unit at the side of the building.
"They are going to store all our stuff in there as they clean them during the week," he said, noting that even the curtains from his apartment will have to be washed.
"They're leaving us basically just enough clothes and whatnot between here and Thursday," he added.
Caisse said his understanding is that his and some other mattresses will have to be thrown away, and residents will have to replace them at their own cost.
"The long and the short of it is they expect us to bear the cost of replacing mattresses and box springs and everything else," he said.
As of Aug. 17, Caisse did not know where he would go during the fumigation.
"They were hoping that we had our own place to go to during these couple of days, but not everybody has relatives or whatever that we're supposed to go to," he said.
Caisse said the bedbug infestation began over two weeks ago in one apartment near his apartment.
"If they had of done that one apartment when it was found out to be full of bugs they could have limited it to one apartment, and that would have been that," he said.
He said three apartments were infested by bedbugs last year and only they were fumigated, which took care of the problem at that time.
Caisse described an unpleasant situation at Riverview Lodge since the recent infestation began.
"I am getting bit," he said. "I've got 17 welts, I guess you could call them, all over my body as we speak."
Plus, he said it is difficult to sleep.
"Like one of my woman neighbours told me, she got the heebie-jeebies," he said, noting that some people scratch even without being bitten by a bedbug.
Caisse also had an infestation of ants in his apartment in 2016.
Sanders of the Housing Corporation noted there are "limited options" in the NWT to address pest situations such as bed bugs and that can result in minor delays.
"To address that issue, the NWTHC is considering purchasing fumigation equipment and materials," said the official.